


such beautiful shadows

by intimatopia



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akechi Goro is Bad at Feelings, Akira Kurusu is a Disaster, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chronic Pain, M/M, POV Second Person, Repression, Slow Burn, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:54:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 52,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28756935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intimatopia/pseuds/intimatopia
Summary: You’ve heard of soulmates, of course, but they’re rare. They’re rare, and they’d never happen to someone like you. You’re not naive enough to think the universe isjust,but even it wouldn’t be cruel enough to saddle someone withyou.There’s still some part of you that craves it, a wistful longing you can never entirely abandon.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kitagawa Yusuke, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 25
Kudos: 149





	such beautiful shadows

**Author's Note:**

> [title poem](https://lithub.com/the-good-light/).
> 
> [v](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drowns) has a light au of their own, and very graciously allowed me to spin my own take on it with akechi and akira. shoutout to them for the encouragement and company and everything they gave me that let me write this. thanks also to [summer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wondernoise) for reading along as i wrote this. [mac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/macavitykitsune) and [moki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonvapour) were invaluable as beta readers, especially with a work as large as this <3
> 
> thanks to the goro big bang organizers for creating this event! [you can check out the art for this piece here](https://twitter.com/zoebittnerart/status/1349809005640753154?s=21).

You live in darkness.

When you think about it—which is not that often, really—you admire the irony of it. The way you don't have to switch on the kitchen light to make yourself coffee, the way you wake up long before the sun rises and never draw back the curtains and fall asleep late, all to avoid the oppressive weight of light, the way it pulls you near and whispers of power.

You hold it in, grimly. A living prison for something no one should be able to imprison.

You hardly remember your mother, but you remember the small flat you lived in; it had echoed with her light, her music, the scent of her soft perfume. She'd been talented behind the capacity of any person to hold, and it had killed her.

It had killed her, and you still spend nights trying to unearth the cause and sequence of her death, like that would _help._ Like that would erase what she'd gone through.

You can never figure it out. You can hardly breathe. Light is heavier than anyone expects it to be, and you carry it with all the grace of a dying packhorse. You'd been worse as a child, bright sparks and disco-ball tantrums and all that fucking _anger_ against the world, already, for saddling you with something that hurts so much.

The pain fades as you grow older. Becomes something you can live with, even if it isn’t easy.

Your father uses you, and you let him. You’re too tired to fight it when it brings you further away from the home your mother lit up with her dying breath. You throw yourself into working, graduate school with perfect grades and throw yourself into college even harder. Your father refuses to pay for philosophy so you do criminology instead, picking up extra classes and seminars just to give yourself less time to think.

They’re not easy distractions, but that’s what makes them useful.

In your free time, when you’re not working for the SIU, you look up leads on your own. Some, you foist onto people who could use the leg-up. The more interesting ones you pursue by yourself. You’ve got a spreadsheet in code but your mind’s where you keep the majority of your findings.

One such lead catches your eye. A single painting, sold over and over again.

It would’ve been suspicious even if it wasn’t the _Sayuri_ herself. You’ve heard of it, of course. Who hasn’t? But it supposedly hangs in a gallery in the art district, and here it is being sold anyway, so either it’s a fake or one of these is—or the forger keeps the original for themself, pawning off copies to eager buyers.

You wonder if Madarame, the original painter, is aware of the forgery.

Well, you have your own ways of searching for the truth. You do your best by them and then locate someone who sources information for you.

 **Crow** : what can you tell me about the dealer selling Sayuri?

 **Alibaba** : depends on what i get in return

 **Alibaba** : i want this model airship https://trjdfa.tor/al34mu

 **Crow** : i’m not made of money

 **Alibaba** : should’ve thought of that before asking for my help

 **Alibaba** : :3

 **Crow** : ...fine. The usual pick-up spot.

 **Alibaba** : [file attachment: 7.3mb]

 **Crow** : quick as ever

 **Crow** : thank you

Funding a high schooler’s model airplane addiction probably isn’t a good use of your father’s money, but that’s what makes it so satisfying.

That’s not the only piece of the puzzle, of course. Tracing the location, talking to people nearby to ask if they’ve seen anything suspicious, using his detective’s pass to look at CCTV footage, hunting down rumors.

You run one of the paintings by an authenticator. She’s no help. That’s what tips you off that there’s more to this than what’s on the surface.

But in the end, it’s not even that difficult. It’s three months of exhaustion and a mounting anger at the world you’ve held onto all your life, but not _hard._ Which is, perhaps, the most exhausting part; that this has gone for _years_ and it’s taken you less than a school term to work out that Madarame is swindling his clients and the art world and plagiarising from his students. That no one’s ever _bothered_ to listen to the people calling it out, dismissing them as bitter students or jealous peers or simply crazy. A couple of them killed themselves. The injustice of it wounds you like barbs, tearing discomfort.

Madarame has an exhibition opening soon. You’ll go—you go to most such events you can wrangle an invitation to. 

The appointment sits in your calendar as you spend long nights writing that report, looming threateningly in the horizon. More than anything, galleries are full of light. Light and people and art; known stressors. It bleeds your control thin. You can’t afford an accident.

Not that you’ve _ever_ had an accident. Not since your mother died. Maybe it won’t be so bad.

The thought makes you smile despite yourself, scrolling through class reading on your laptop that’s carefully modded to give off as little light as possible.

Then the thought comes, unwelcome: it’s _always_ bad. Your standards are just skewed.

You shut your laptop and go to bed.

The exhibition’s worse than you could have anticipated. It’s swarming with people, and within seconds of entering, a reporter shoves a mic in your face, a cameraman clicking away behind her, reminding you oddly that a _real_ gallery should never have allowed so many people to introduce corrosive light around sensitive paintings.

Of course that doesn’t matter to Madarame himself, standing by one of the paintings and explaining the meaning behind it. He’s excellent at acting humbly; much better at it than your father. It’s still fake, but you find it fascinating in its veracity.

You’ve done your research, of course. You’ll bet anything Madarame hasn’t painted the art he’s so eager to brag about. The style’s nothing like the Sayuri and nothing like his earlier work, prior to fame.

In the meantime you answer the questions presented to you, talking about your lifelong interest in art and your curiosity about the gallery opening. You manage to be appreciative of the artwork without mentioning names, you think, although you’re not quite sure. You’re already getting dizzy. So much _light._

Even in the paintings. You keep having to look away, pulled towards it and simultaneously pulled away.

Trapping light in people is a dicey prospect, and you’re stronger than most. But even you can’t stand in front of some of these works without feeling something long-buried and ignored bubble up inside you, fighting its way to the surface.

“Do you like what you see?” someone asks behind you.

You swing around, pasting on your TV-ready smile. “It’s lovely,” you say automatically. You’ve no idea what you were looking at, just that it was _too much._ You pull the image to your mind’s eye and continue. “The use of color and composition is masterful.”

“One wouldn’t expect anything else from the great Madarame, of course,” the guy says virtuously, but he flushes as he says it. The words _the great Madarame_ sound rote in his voice, like it’s been drilled into him. You know the texture of rehearsed words from people who don’t know how to make them come out naturally. There’s a trick to it, a self-awareness or a rise in tone. 

You take a longer, closer look at him. “Of course not,” you reply absently. “Yusuke Kitagawa, right? You’re one of his students?”

Yusuke looks surprised. “Yes. I didn’t know I was well-known.”

“I am something of an enthusiast about the contemporary art scene,” you say with fake modesty. Then you drop it. “Which one of these did you paint?”

“ _Excuse me_?”

“Was it this one?” you ask, turning back to the painting you were looking at. It’s gorgeous, really, a simple but eloquent oil painting of a slant of light falling on a table crowded by art supplies. “You blushed when I said it was good.”

“How dare you accuse my master like this—” Yusuke starts, heated.

“I didn’t accuse him of anything,” you note, and then step away when the heat grows too much for you to bear. The light is _merciless._ “I appreciate the chance to talk to you, though.” You nod crisply, and move onto a painting on the other side of the room.

The way the brightness of the gallery pulls you in a hundred different directions at once grows entirely untenable after another fifteen minutes, and you step outside and strike off at random. You don’t know what you’re looking for except darkness, and where better to find it than the subway? Light in the subway doesn’t behave the same as light above ground does. It’s got an air of resignation, and it doesn’t break you so badly to stand under it.

You’re heading up the stairs when you realize you have no idea where you are. You’re not even sure what tickets you asked for. 

But there’s something tugging at you, like what you’d felt at the gallery but more focused. If you were feeling less unnerved you’d ignore it and just go back home, get back to work despite the time you’ve lost, but _there_ it is again, and—

_Yusuke Kitagawa is ahead of you._

Have you been _following_ him this entire time? How embarrassing. 

There’s nowhere else to go for now, though, so you keep walking. Slower this time, resisting the ache.

You’re glad of that decision when you see Yusuke approach a girl with ivory blond hair, a profile you should maybe recognize since Yusuke’s clearly followed _her_ from the gallery; but you’d been barely cognizant of your surroundings at the exhibition. She turns, shocked by his presence but clearly prepared for it, and a few seconds later two men emerge from behind Yusuke. A blond guy and a dark-haired guy, dressed casually like the people you go to college with. Certainly you’ve never worn a t-shirt that says _i’m sorry for what i said during burpee._ You’re not even sure _what_ a burpee is, except that it’s presumably alcoholic in nature.

There’s an argument that goes on for a while. You see the girl’s affront, the guys’ shock and concern. The way they stand protectively close to her even as it’s clear that Yusuke poses no harm.

You want to leave but something roots you in place. Since when has your shockingly useless ability acted up so _badly_? There’s a damnable hook under your stomach, yanking you towards the little knot of people, but it’s more akin to an inverse of what light does to you than anything else. It hurts regardless, and you clench your gloved hands into fists, trying to breathe through the raw feeling of it.

Yusuke nearly gets slapped. You spitefully wish that he _had_ been slapped. Would’ve served him and his paintings of light right for pulling you on silly chases halfway across Tokyo.

The dark-haired guy catches your eyes briefly as you turn to go, though, an awful _knowledge_ flitting across his expression too fast for you to pin it down. Your stomach lurches, tugging desperately, but you force it down and turn back, heading into the subway. You don’t have time for your useless ability to develop feelings of its own. You don’t have _time._

You’ve heard of soulmates, of course, but they’re rare. They’re rare, and they’d never happen to someone like you. You’re not naive enough to think the universe is _just_ , but even it wouldn’t be cruel enough to saddle someone with _you_. 

There’s still some part of you that craves it, a wistful longing you can never entirely abandon.

But you get more lost with every step closer to home and even the familiar unwelcome of darkness isn’t enough to soothe your unease. You toe your shoes off, walking further in. You’ve lived in this place for seven years and it’s never managed to feel like a _home_ , but you’re safe here. It’s the only place you don’t have to commit yourself to hiding all the time.

Your light’s restless today, furling out of you as you exhale and drop your briefcase. It’s a strange dim glow trailing after your gestures despite gloves and layers of cloth. You’re supposed to be better at controlling it. 

At least that damned pulling has faded, leaving only a hollow ache behind.

You boot up your laptop. It’s still open on the report on Madarame you’d been writing. You want this out before the week is over, but it’s slow and frustrating—you keep having to go back for additional research, tightening loose ends and closing loopholes. Trawling through spreadsheets and the files Alibaba provided you and old bank records (the public access ones, anyway) should be mind-numbingly boring, but you rather like drudge work. It’s easy to focus on, one step and then the next, especially when you’re excited about the larger puzzle you’re solving. You don’t know how long you spend on it, except that the street below your window has gone quiet by the time you rise and stretch out the knots in your back, and no errant light follows your footsteps as you reheat cold takeout in the microwave for a late dinner.

You’ve got class the next day, and it’s a relief to be back in a familiar challenge—nothing too hectic or insistent. There’s a method to being around people and lights that you taught yourself after your mother died and everything she’d taught you hurt too much to use. The grind of classwork and homework and making nice with teachers and students just enough that they know you but keep their distance all the same.

You can’t afford to be near people. Can’t afford someone asking questions. You found a hundred ways to keep everyone away at school, and make new methods for college, but you’re not really worried. The few people that try quickly learn how cold and empty you are, how you’re a bad friend at the best of times, impatient and too focused on work to make time for anything else.

The rest are nudged away in other ways. And yeah, you’re lonely, but that doesn’t matter. You were made for loneliness. It holds you like a spotlight.

You eat in the library’s seating area, editing your report in the free slot after lunch, and hit send.

It’ll be in the papers by tomorrow.

You’ve got little else to do for the rest of the day, nowhere to be and no one to talk to, so you end up reading in bed. You’ve inherited three things from your mother: the light, the habit of wearing gloves to dam the light, and a book on philosophy she’d been reading when she died.

Everything else she had was packed away into boxes and put into storage. You’d been told you could see it again anytime, but your father had made it clear you were never to ask. As far as the world was concerned, your mother had never existed.

The gloves you wear now are expensive and soft, fine leather that clings to your skin so you can even use a touchscreen with them on. The gloves your mother gifted you hadn’t been quite so choice, but you now know how much she must’ve scrimped and saved to get them for you. You’d worn the first pair so thin your light peeked through the leather, and then your mother had died before she could get you another set. Not that you’d have been able to afford it by the end.

Your father had bought the gloves you wore after her death with a sharp admonishment that you shouldn’t have needed them at all, like you didn’t fucking _know_ that already. What a goddamned disappointment you were, unable to protect your mother or be of any service to your father. Your lack of control wore on them even more than it wore on you.

Ever a burden. You should’ve been _light._

You fall asleep with the gloves still on. These days you only take them off when you absolutely have to.

The news cycle is rolling downhill at a breakneck speed by the time you turn on the TV the next morning. You’re already dressed with your first mug of the coffee for the day clutched in your hand as you go over today’s class reading with a highlighter.

“...Published in the _Tokyo Journal,_ another case solved by ace detective Goro Akechi paints the artist Madarame Ichiryusai as a fraud and forger. The report is stunningly comprehensive. We have not been able to reach either Madarame or Akechi for comment yet, but a source close to the artist said that they would be investigating the claims and prosecuting if necessary.”

You sigh and turn on your phone. The messages have rolled in: an order to meet your father from his secretary, no less than four interview requests, and an insanely clogged mentions section on Twitter. You reply to them one by one, an affirmative to the secretary that she’ll pass on to your father, agreeing to one interview later today. You briefly consider deleting Twitter entirely before simply deleting all the notifications so you can focus on your reading.

Your father’s going to kill you, but you’re used to his ire. Not thrilled—who would be? But it’s hardly like Madarame was anything of great priority or importance to Shido—you’ve done your research—and he’d become something of a liability in a few years time anyway.

If anything, your father should be thanking you for getting a problem out of the way early.

Yeah, right. Like that'll ever happen.

 _Real celebrities,_ you think absently, _probably have assistants to take care of this shit._

You finish breakfast (just the one coffee) and take a cab to college. You’re not up to facing the subway today.

Your classmates can be relied upon to ignore you until they can’t. The rumors are already drifting around you by the time you slide into your usual seat near the front of the lecture hall. The girl behind you actually takes her friends up on the dare to tap you on the shoulder and ask if you really wrote that report. You smile blandly and tell her to pay attention to class even though the professor’s not even in yet.

The professors are better, or too tired to bother. You still have a headache by the time you get home, picking out your usual formalwear for the interview. Of course the lights will be worse there, trained on you. Daring you to slip up.

They’re no different from your father. You layer your clothes to put more between you and the light. But your light’s been quieter today as though exhausted by yesterday’s tantrum.

You meet your father before you go to the studio. His downtown office is a fifteen minute walk away. You end up there ten minutes early and wonder if other children also need appointments to speak with their fathers.

Stupid thought. You know they don’t. But then their fathers probably want them around for reasons other than the possible advantage of a child with an ability.

Some advantage you’ve turned out to be on that front. Your mother had been powerful—light, sound, touch. So powerful she died, unable to bear that burden. Other ability users, ones that are weaker, don’t die as young as she did. But that kind of power was never meant to be shouldered alone even if there are no alternatives to loneliness for people like you either.

The prospect of bearing this alone for the rest of your life frightens you. It’s a good thing you don’t intend to live that long.

Shido is standing near the window overlooking the city when the secretary rings you in. He’s speaking on the phone. Yelling at someone. You clutch your briefcase a little harder, palms itching with light. You never want to bite your nails or stick your fingers in freezing water more than when you’re near your father.

“There you are,” Shido says coolly, when he ends the call and turns around—like he isn’t the one that kept you waiting for a full twenty minutes. “Your little stunt caused quite a few problems for me.”

You’ve rehearsed your replies, but words are always difficult around Shido. “Not as many as he would’ve caused for you a year down the line.”

“I would’ve had you deal with him then,” Shido snaps. “No need to jump the gun.”

“I thought you appreciated initiative,” you reply, knowing damn well that it’s all talk. Shido hates anything outside his sphere of influence.

His mouth twists into a sneer. “This isn’t _initiative_ so much as you becoming too used to the spotlight. A couple news cycles without a mention of you and you get twitchy and jealous. Or am I to believe you care so _much_ about some poor artists?” There’s a sharp derision to the words, and your palms are prickling like someone’s driving a thousand little needles into your nerves.

“Some of them died,” you say tightly. “I can care about that, if nothing else.” You open your briefcase, the last sally in this doomed battle. Pick out a file you printed before heading here. “All of that is true, but it isn’t in the report.”

Shido glares at you, but takes the file. He flips through it idly, eyes widening in a satisfactory fashion at the third page. “ _Murder_?”

“One of his student’s mothers,” you say, though that’s in the file too.

“Idiot,” Shido mutters. “Don’t do this again. You may leave.”

You leave, swinging by the washroom on the ground floor to run cold tap water over your fingers for as long as you dare before you hear voices outside the door.

It helps a little. Not enough. You’re used to scraps, though. Your gloves are back on by the time you step into the TV studio, mask firmly in place. The brightness of it is as soul-sucking as ever, fake smiles pasted over thick makeup. You’re forced into one of the chairs in the dressing room so someone can redo your hair into the public’s image of you. At least they leave your skin alone.

You keep yourself occupied by rehearsing lines in your head. Even with your eyes closed to let the hairstylist work without interruption, the light presses down on your face and makes it harder to breathe.

That’s normal. What’s _not_ normal is the pull in your chest as you step out of the dressing room. You think about following it, but you’re done giving in to your ability’s whims. You think you catch sight of the dark-haired guy you saw with Yusuke earlier standing with the light technicians, but you ignore them to the best of your ability. Your heart aches like someone’s trying to pull it apart at the seams, and your light’s pushing frantically at your skin. Straining to get out.

_Not now, not now._

Your pulse is hammering by the time you settle down on the couch, and no amount of media training can make that go away.

“What made you think Madarame might be engaging in such awful activities on the side?” the interviewer—Tanemura—asks you, just as the last of the audience are finding their seats.

Again that _damned_ pull. You grit your teeth and smile carefully. “I keep an eye on the internet. If you have an idea of what you’re looking for, it really isn’t so hard to find it. Of course, one must be careful not to pick only the data that suits one’s conclusions.”

The audience titters like you’ve said something impressive, while the interviewer smiles benevolently. “Of course, but we wonder where you get these ideas from—your report said most of this information is available, but no one before you uncovered it quite so thoroughly. There’s something quite special about you, Akechi-kun.”

“That’s one word for it,” you say modestly. Your fucking _teeth_ hurt from resisting the gravity. “I just pay attention, that’s all. Other people—previous students of Madarame’s, had raised the alarm, but most of them either caved or killed themselves. Hardly an environment suitable for exposure. It was my lack of direct involvement in the situation that gave me the tools to see it clearly, and to make a decision which, while destructive in the short term, will surely lead to an explosion of prosperity and creativity in the Japanese contemporary art scene now that so many young artists aren’t being held hostage by Madarame’s designs.” Your mind flashes to Kitagawa, and you swallow. “This is a chance bright for the taking.”

You meant to say _ripe._ You bite the inside of your mouth punishingly hard, and reach for the glass of water to cover up your wince.

Tanemura is nodding. “You always have such clear insights,” he says, condescending in his gentle surprise. You wonder how that attitude would hold up if he took a swift fall off his chair into the audience. “We _do_ look forward to the creations of Madarame’s former pupils. Why, just the other day we got into contact with Yusuke Kitagawa—”

“Is he here?” You’re _not_ panicking. You’re not—this is just a normal amount of worry.

“Of course not!” Tanemura looks surprised, and then smiles slyly. “Do you like his work?”

An easy out, and you grasp it eagerly. “I do, in fact,” you say quickly. “I was able to identify one of the paintings Madarame stole from him, and he is immensely talented. I can’t wait to see what he will come up with, set free of his awful teacher’s exploitation.”

“Your enthusiasm for art is astounding,” Tanemura says. “Though not unexpected, given how you’re always on top of the next trend.” It’s an unsubtle jab; you ignore it. “I’m sure Yusuke Kitagawa would be gratified to hear of your interest—though it is a coincidence that you should bring him up—” You hadn’t, but you let it slide “—as we were just discussing how in light of your report Madarame will almost certainly go to prison. Without his money his students will be left destitute. It’s a rather tragic state of affairs.” The last parts are addressed to the camera. “I’m sure you have something to say about that too, Akechi-kun.”

You’ve known, on some level, that your report would leave Yusuke Kitagawa homeless. It’s different to be informed of the reality of it in front of about two hundred people. “Well,” you begin, licking your lips. Suddenly you’re extremely aware of everyone looking at you. “The law is the law, and justice must be served to wrongdoers. But Kitagawa-kun has done nothing wrong. I see no fairness in his suffering, or indeed that of any of Madarame’s pupils. I’d offer him my own home if I could—to prevent Madarame’s influence from causing anybody further pain.”

“That’s awfully generous of you,” Tanemura says indulgently. You imagine him falling off his chair again, this time into some lady’s lap. Preferably a lady with a sticky drink. “Though you might feel quite differently about actually sharing a house with an artist—paint everywhere, I can’t even imagine the mess.” Smothered laughs from the audience.

You’ve made a bit of a mess of _this._ You can’t afford to bury your face in your knees until the sweltering light fades, but you take another sip of water and try to smile.

It’s a short segment, which is why you agreed to it in the first place, so they cut it soon after. This leaves you free to go, but you stay on the couch and chat with Tanemura some more because you don’t trust your legs to carry you. You could talk to some of the audience—and indeed on another day you might have made the attempt, but you’re simply too _tired_ today. Your head is pounding, stuffed full of something impossibly heavy and dense.

So you find yourself in the washroom again, the one on the first floor where few people will come in the direct aftermath of an airing. Leaning over the counter to examine yourself in the mirror, hating the lights reflecting from the LEDs overhead off the mirror and the tap heads.

You don’t want to take off your gloves here, so you simply rest your elbows against the counter and press the backs of your hands into your eyes until the ache’s replaced by a more immediate issue.

Have you ever felt anything like this tugging before? You can’t remember. It’s like missing someone, or being drawn into an orbit. The only person you’ve loved well enough to miss is your mother, and you don’t think about her like this. Like a magnet stitched into your stomach, dragging you north.

 _North,_ you think, sharper this time, and look up.

The dark-haired guy from earlier is standing there.

At close quarters, that aching gravity is making you dizzy. Your voice comes out hoarse and defensive. “What are you doing here? Did you _follow_ me?”

“Not intentionally,” the guy says. He looks one part concerned, another something else you can’t pin down. You hate both of those expressions, though. You want to snarl at him until he backs off and leaves you nurse your bleeding light alone. You want to make sure he never leaves again. “There’s just—something. Can you feel it too?”

“I can’t feel anything,” you say coldly.

All the lights go out with a sharp suction _pop_ , as if to call attention to your lie. Plunged in sudden darkness, without the distraction of bathroom LEDs, you can’t suppress _all_ the glow inside you. It leaks out despite your best efforts, swirling through the air and illuminating the guy like a faintly shining swarm of fireflies.

“Power failure?” the guy says skeptically, mouth quirking into a smile.

You hiss.

“Look,” the guy says patiently, as though it’s not pitch-fucking-black. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about, but I can help. You have an ability, right? Me too. I won’t hurt you.”

There’s a strange humor to it all, this boy comforting you like _you’re_ the one who’s about to run screaming in terror at any second. Which you totally are, as soon as you figure out a way to get past him. You’re just generally better at hiding that…

You’re not hiding _anything_ right now. It’s dark and you’re lit up from within.

But you take a deep breath, and then another. _I’m not scared,_ you think, over and over until it’s true.

The lights flicker back on, bringing their weight back to bear on you. The guy looks surprised.

“Would you look at that,” you say sardonically. “Looks like it was a power failure after all.”

“If you’re sure,” the guy replies, all polite disbelief. “I’m Akira Kurusu, by the way. It’s only right you should know my name, since I know yours.”

“I couldn’t care less,” you sneer, shoving the name under icy blankets of light where it will be safe. “Thank you for your concern, but please don’t make a habit of following public figures into bathrooms. Someone could get quite the wrong idea.”

Akira Kurusu doesn’t respond, and he steps aside to let you pass by. His eyes are heavy on your back as you leave, though, a searing pressure like light inverted. You ignore it, swallow against the new pulsing ache inside you, and keep walking. You’ll be home before you let yourself think about what just happened.

You can’t shake off the feeling of eyes watching you all the way back to your flat. You know it’s only the constant glow of the city and your newfound, unwelcome sensitivity, but it makes it harder to think. You keep looking over your shoulder.

That night you sleep badly, plagued by dreams of your father cornering you in a bathroom and asking you what you’re hiding. _Can you feel it too?_

It’s still dark outside when you wake up, and you stumble out of your bedroom and into the kitchen to put on the coffeemaker. Your skin is still glowing faintly, reflecting off of the countertops and the fridge, and another time you might’ve shrugged on a jacket and taken a walk around the block but you don’t dare go out with all this stupid light spilling off your skin. You drink your coffee curled up on the couch and then fall asleep again.

You wake up to someone knocking on the door.

Your first, muzzy thought is, _mom?_ And then you remember, with a lurching heartsickness, that she isn’t here anymore.

Very few people knock on your door. Delivery men with takeout tend to ring the bell.

You rope your light in and rub your eyes before opening the door.

“Uh,” you say intelligently.

“Did you mean that?” Yusuke Kitagawa asks. He has an intensity to him—even straight-backed, he gives the overwhelming impression of leaning in, focusing on you to the exclusion of all else.

You scan through your last conversation with Kitagawa, come up short to an answer to his question, and then run his name through other conversations. “About living with me?”

“Yes,” Yusuke says, with thinning patience. Like you’re the one at fault here.

You want to go back to sleep. It has to be too early for this nonsense. “I…that was _on TV_.” 

“So you _didn’t_ mean it?” Yusuke asks, like he’s disappointed in you. Like _you’re_ somehow at fault here, for lying on TV. Everyone lies on TV, for fuck’s sake. Yusuke has no right to look so _injured_ about it.

You take a deep breath. “I didn’t say that.” You rub at your eyes with the backs of your gloved hands, trying to push back the headache. “Why don’t you…come in. For a while.”

Yusuke has a single bag, which appears to contain mostly art supplies. You don’t ask where the rest of his things are, out of some desire to be polite even when cornered. A desire that was sharply missing last night, you think with a curl of shame. You acquitted yourself horribly, yelling at someone with no more intention to harm than Yusuke did.

Who still manages a great deal of harm, by having absolutely no filter and no compunctions about commenting on your flat. “Why is it so dark in here?” he asks, standing shoeless and jacketless in the genkan.

“The curtains are closed and the lights are off,” you point out. At least you’re not sparkling with hysteria.

“Yes, but _why_?” Yusuke demands.

You push randomly at the switchboard until the foyer lights up, holding down a wince against the pressure of it so early in the morning. “Better?”

Yusuke _smiles_ at you. “Much better, thank you.”

The praise, faint and useless as it is, still makes you ache a little inside. Maybe because it’s utterly genuine. You turn around and gesture Yusuke to the couch, going into the bedroom to retrieve your phone.

There you discover that it is no longer _early in the morning._ It’s nearly ten am. You _never_ sleep in so much. You sit down heavily on the bed and struggle against the urge to cry before clicking your phone back on to check your schedule for the day.

Nothing planned except for homework and a visit to a cafe Sae recommended. Practically a free day, by any standard—except for Yusuke Kitagawa in your living room.

You’ve no idea what you’re supposed to say to Yusuke. You steel yourself and go out anyway, finding Yusuke still on the couch and examining one of the books on the coffee table by the light of his phone; a depressing sight if there ever was one. It’s not even _that_ dark, for heaven’s sake.

You never intended for anyone to see this aspect of your life. You and your stupid mouth and that stupid gravity making it hard to think.

But you switch on the light and grab your empty mug of coffee and go into the kitchen for a refill. You’re going to need the caffeine to think.

Yusuke follows you, still holding the book. “Do you never switch on the lights?”

“I know my way around the apartment,” you say sharply, pouring two mugs of coffee and handing one to Yusuke. 

He sniffs at it before putting it down on the table. “It’s _very_ dark in here,” he tells you, frowning and squinting around like a window will materialize and let in some sunshine.

 _You_ can see just fine. You take a sip of coffee, find it cold and bitter, and regret it. “I guess I must have better eyesight than you.”

The polite thing to do would be to drop it and ask where the switchboard is—Yusuke and etiquette probably haven’t been on speaking terms in a few years, though, because what Yusuke says to _that_ is, “No. My vision’s perfect, in sharpness and color.”

You remember, suddenly, a diagram in your seventh grade biology textbook about the workings of the eye. The way light reflects off the back and onto a screen known as the retina.

The way light draws _closer_ to you just as much as you try to push it _down_ and _away._

“The switchboard is next to the fridge,” you say. “Just to your right and back—yes, there.”

Yusuke finds them and flips them on, shading a hand over his eyes to shield them from the harsh glow. You want to go to bed and hide under the blankets, where things aren’t so heavy. “You’re an odd one,” Yusuke informs you, like _he_ hadn’t knocked on your door to see if you want a roommate.

“I’m going to book you a hotel,” you tell him.

“I tried the hotel,” Yusuke replies, like there’s only one hotel in all of Tokyo. “They called the press.”

You wince. “Welcome to fame?”

“I won’t get in your way,” Yusuke says earnestly. “I only need some space—and light—to do my art, and when I’ve made enough to get out of your hair I will. It shouldn’t be too long.”

That is not reassuring in the least. “There’s a guest bedroom,” comes out of your mouth.

Yusuke’s bag is full of art supplies, such that little space remains for two shirts and one pant other than the ones he’s wearing. “You’re going to need more clothes than this,” you say, folding them up and putting them in the cupboard, where they sit sad and alone on the shelf.

“Can we switch on the lights?” Yusuke asks plaintively.

“Sure,” you say distractedly. And then, like an idiot: “I have some free time later today. We can go buy you clothes.”

“A real artist does not focus on the material,” Yusuke intones.

You roll your eyes. “A real artist has more than three shirts.” You take one of them off the shelf and hand it to Yusuke, gesturing him to the bathroom. “You’ve probably been in that one all day.”

You leave Yusuke alone after that, taking a quick shower and lightly gelling your hair so it lies flat instead of fluffing into an unforgivable cloud. You grab your laptop from your desk where it’s charging and head into the living room to do homework for a while, ignoring the sound of Yusuke making himself at home. You should’ve invested in better soundproofing, but you’d never expected to have a roommate either.

“When are we having lunch?” Yusuke asks, coming out of the room after some indeterminate time has passed.

You forgot about lunch. “I can order in right now,” you say. “What do you want to eat?”

“Sushi,” Yusuke says dreamily, and goes back inside.

Sushi for lunch isn’t a bad idea, all told. You place the order and keep working.

You take a break when the sushi arrives, portioning it out onto plates and going to Yusuke’s room to give him his part of it. He’s elected to stay in there, with the lights on. He’s sketching when you come in, and puts it away easily to focus on food. He’s disinclined to small talk and summarily kneecaps your weak attempt towards a discussion of the weather, but he’s happy to be engaged about the subject of his sketch—a simple piece of the girl who’d slapped him. He speaks enthusiastically and eloquently about her beauty, the way it compels him to draw.

What would it be like to be so compelled? You’re only moved by light, by the ache that drew you to that boy in the washroom. The ache’s faded entirely over the past few hours, retreating into him like a snail into a shell. Waiting.

You both go shopping after lunch. You were uneasy about the endeavour despite it being your suggestion, especially after the incident in the bathroom, but your light is still compliant and quiet. First, you take Yusuke to the shop where you get your shirts prior to tailoring (“I didn’t know you could tailor shirts _after_ buying them,” Yusuke says) and then to your tailor to get them adjusted. They’re slightly too broad at the shoulder to accommodate Yusuke’s longer arms.

Pants are unbelievably difficult to negotiate. Yusuke has a thousand opinions on cuts and fabric and colors, and you can argue about anything.

But it occurs to you as you hiss at each other on the pavement outside the shop that Madarame was doing himself and Yusuke a service of sorts by keeping him in three shirts and two pants. No one can sanely argue against someone who thinks it’s desirable for pants to be bottle green with a flared bottom.

“I thought real artists don’t focus on ‘the material,’” you say, with rapidly thinning patience.

“I changed my mind,” Yusuke says smugly. “Fashion is another kind of art.”

You don’t win against the bottle green pants, but you cling grimly to your principles and win the next two rounds. You surrender the last to Yusuke for the sake of your pounding head, and because you want to be done quicker so you can get some coffee.

“You drink a concerning amount of coffee,” Yusuke informs you. He’s holding one shopping bag. You’re holding the other.

You resist the urge to jump into traffic or give him an annoyed look. You’ve only had two mugs today. Three, if you count the one you had early in the morning—you’re not counting it because it didn’t keep you awake. “I like the taste,” you say blandly. “Did you know there are thirty types of coffee in the world?”

“And all of them taste terrible,” Yusuke replies. “Tea is far superior.”

“Tea can’t keep you up all night,” you point out dryly.

“Why would you _want_ to stay up all night?” Yusuke asks.

You shrug, noncommittal. “To work, sometimes, but mostly to read things. I don’t have a lot of time during the day.”

Yusuke is frowning. You don’t know what you’ve said wrong short of _everything._ “Sometimes I stay up to paint,” Yusuke says. “But I don’t have to drink coffee to stay up. It just happens, because I’m focused and don’t want to stop.”

“I might die if I don’t drink coffee every four hours,” you mutter fervently.

Now Yusuke looks concerned. You wish you’d kept your mouth shut, but perhaps due to all the walking around and arguing, you’re exhausted and twitchy and snappy in a way you usually try not to be. The fact that your burden is easier to bear today—when usually being out in public for more than a couple hours turns into a battle between yourself and every light in the vicinity—actually only makes it harder to stay on the right side of not saying too much.

The coffeeshop Sae recommended is in Yongen-Jaya, tucked away in an odd little backstreet and empty when you step inside with Yusuke in tow. It’s like walking a dog—he keeps getting distracted by oddly shaped trees, people, clouds, mailboxes, the colour of the sky. You can’t imagine going through life with so little purpose or direction. It’s a wonder you’re not both still in that antique shop Yusuke spotted on the way over.

You had to promise to bring him back to get him to leave, a promise which will no doubt bite you in the ass in a few days.

The pull in your chest sharpens suddenly as you step in, but it takes you a second to place it.

You trace it, and it leads you right to...oh no. Oh, _hell_ no. Not this _again._

“Are you alright?” Yusuke asks crisply, pausing behind you.

You’re staring at the boy behind the counter, but you tear your eyes away to nod. That damned _pulling_ again. Has it been there all along, with you too focused on Yusuke to notice it bringing you here?

Akira himself looks a little shell-shocked to see you for the second time in the same number of days, but recovers from it admirably to ask, “Can I get you anything?”

You turn around and walk right into Yusuke, who pushes you unkindly back into the shop. “You’re going to die if you don’t get coffee,” he says sternly.

“That was a joke,” you mumble weakly, but you’ve given up entirely on the day.

Akira Kurusu is standing exactly as he had been before you tried to run away, coffee pitcher still in hand. You bite the inside of your mouth to prevent yourself from flushing and sit down at one of the tables. It’s a nice cafe, quiet and out of the way, TV on but turned low, clean if slightly dusty. Pleasantly dim. You can see why Sae likes it.

You’d like it too, if it weren’t for the miserable pulling in your chest. You ignore it, make up your mind and turn to the bar. Paste on a media-ready smile and a pleasant attitude. “What would you recommend we have?”

“Coffee,” Akira says.

“None for me,” Yusuke interjects. “I don’t like coffee.”

“We have curry too,” Akira adds helpfully.

“He’ll have a plate of that,” you say, right over the frown beginning to mar Yusuke’s brow. “And I’ll have a mug of coffee. Extra sugar. Thank you.”

“In a minute,” Akira says, sounding distracted. You watch him closely as he sets to work despite knowing better than to stare—Akira’s clumsy, spilling coffee on the counter and forgetting to wipe it away, banging into the wall when he goes into the pantry to retrieve something. You wonder if he’s usually like this, or if the pull affects him as badly as it affects you.

Maybe you should do something about that pull, even if only because it appears to be affecting someone other than you. But you’re not that nice, and you can’t afford to be weak.

Akira sets a plate of curry down in front of Yusuke. You watch him dig in and wonder if he feels anything like this too. Whether whatever compels him to make art also compels him to seek beauty in the people around him.

And rather more relevantly—why has your ability (and it has to be your ability, you know that in the same way you know light is heavy and darkness is safe)—chosen to shackle you to a person whose fate can’t possibly be more different than yours?

You’re not an idiot; you know what it means for people to associate with you beyond the vigilance of a camera. You’re not known for doing your father’s dirty work, but it’s not a secret either.

The people your father hates meet untimely and ignominious ends on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, their business laid out in such blistering clarity that it becomes impossible for them to go on. You’ve got a lot of enemies, your father prime among them, and Akira would receive nothing but suffering from being tied to someone like you. As for Yusuke—his lot could hardly get worse, but you don’t want to find out how it might do that either.

They can’t help you. You’ve always been too proud to bend to the possibility of help.

At least there’s the coffee Akira eventually puts down, hands trembling faintly. _Your_ hands don’t shake as you pick it up, which is meanly satisfying.

The coffee itself is excellent, rich and deep and perfectly sweet. It hits you like a warm fluffy cloud of caffeine, and you bask in it between each sip. Apparently the curry is nice too—Yusuke finishes all of it and announces that he can go without dinner tonight. You tend to go without dinner _most_ nights. But you accept this and take your phone out to scroll through information on another case you’re working. This one’s for the department and not Shido, but that just makes it even more certain to bore you.

Yusuke wanders around the coffee shop, eventually pausing by the door to discuss a piece of art on the wall. You try to tune out the conversation and fail.

Akira doesn’t seem to be holding the conversation from the subway against Yusuke. In fact he doesn’t bring it up at all, which makes you imagine he’d be willing to forget your lapse of control in the bathroom, too.

But people don’t simply forget things like that. It’s more likely that Akira remembers and is simply disinclined to bring it up until it’s an advantage.

You finish his coffee and pay the exact amount for both it and Yusuke’s curry. “Are you done?”

“Nearly,” Yusuke says brightly. “I was just looking at this piece of art here—”

It’s wholly unremarkable to your eyes, but you don’t say that. There are a hundred tiny hooks under your skin and all of them are prying you apart. “It’s quite nice,” you say neutrally, glancing briefly at Akira to see how he’s taking it. “The brushstrokes are unique.”

“I guess they are,” Akira says, looking right back at him shamelessly. “I never thought about it.”

“It’s untraditional, but this use of elements in a composition is quite popular in some schools of art,” Yusuke continues, oblivious to them.

“Don’t tell me,” You say before you can stop yourself. “Latin America?”

Akira looks blank.

“Ana Mendieta,” you clarify unhelpfully. You’d taught yourself rudimentary art history while working on your report on Madarame. Mostly when you couldn’t sleep.

“I can see the influences,” Yusuke says thoughtfully. “But not quite, I think.”

“Thank you for the coffee,” you tell Akira. “I apologize for, ah—” you tap Yusuke gently on the shoulder to indicate him, and then push him out of the door.

“Come again sometime,” Akira replies. It sounds sincere, but you don’t trust that when Akira’s looking at you like he can see right through your pretenses. “You can try another blend.”

“I’d love that,” you say stupidly, and then leave before you can dig a deeper hole.

You suffer on the cab ride home, because Yusuke seems to be under the impression that you’re actually interested in art. You let the words wash over you and respond on autopilot, fingers tense from the effort of keeping in the errant light that still wants you to find Akira and see what connection lies between the two of you.

“We’ll have to find you a hotel tomorrow,” you say, as you’re in the elevator going up to your eleventh floor apartment.

Yusuke looks surprised. “I’m not in the way, though.”

“I don’t have a lot of time,” you say tersely. “Between work and school. I can’t do anything for you—you’d be better off in a hotel.” You dislike saying these things, dislike admitting how little you have at the end of the day. Not even your own time.

“I can’t afford one,” Yusuke points out. The elevator stops, and you retrieve the keys from your pocket to get the lock to your flat. “We spent the last of my money on clothes.”

You exhale, pushing the door open and stepping inside. “We’ll figure something out.”

“If you’re sure,” Yusuke says vaguely. He sounds sad, and when you turn around he’s still standing in the doorway. You put the bags down and wait, uncertain, for Yusuke to say something else. Anything else.

It’s a long minute before Yusuke comes in and closes the door behind himself. You turn away, relieved, only to be arrested again when Yusuke asks, “Can we turn on the lights?”

 _No,_ you want to say. Light is heavy and you are _tired._

But you turn them on. How can you say no?

You work in the bedroom that night, curtains drawn and arranged to let in no light from the street below. It’s a faint comfort when your own power is so close to the surface, control frayed like a day with Yusuke is enough to make you forget what it’s like to have to constantly fight to maintain your grip on yourself.

You should be better than that by now, so you work until you can’t focus and then change out of your clothes as quickly as you can. But there’s still no avoiding the light spilling out of you like you’re being cracked open down every fissure, all your bones visible in the mirror; an x-ray stepping out from behind the screen.

It reminds you of those glowsticks children break. How destructive it is, how patently ugly. Flesh and tendons make the light red and hazy, threatening to overflow like blood. Like a gutted animal gasping to death on the floor.

You shudder away from the image and take your gloves off, flexing your fingers. The feeling of air between them is a little strange to you now. Stranger still is the _ache,_ like arthritis setting in early, your joints groaning and burning with the light they can’t carry.

You close your eyes, and count down from ten. This is an old trick, one your mother taught you. She’d guide you through it every time you had to leave the house, kneeling in front of you and holding your small gloved hands in her own. She had gloves too, silk ones with a paisley pattern and black satin and rich red velvet that didn’t cover her fingers for the days she felt good. She always touched you with them on, disliking the feel of bare skin. _Close your eyes,_ you imagine her whispering, peppermint breath washing over the side of your face. _Count down from ten. It’s like a submarine, isn’t it? Going underwater. Seven, six, five, halfway inside. Three, two, one. Invisible._

And when you opened your eyes, there’d be no light left but the warmth of her smile.

It works. When you look down again it’s almost completely dark, the only sparks left huddling beneath your nails like dirt.

You pull on the thin cloth gloves you sometimes use at night and go to bed. You suspect tomorrow will be no better than today has been.

You wake up before dawn, and you _still_ have a message from your father’s secretary waiting for you. You don’t know when that damned woman ever sleeps, and it itches at your mind as you type out a reply. Yes, you can meet your father for breakfast. Any idea why?

The reply comes back seconds later. _Your activities of late have been unusual._

 _Spying on me again?_ you type, and then erase it. You’re cold; you don’t know where your father gets his information from—it’s not exactly common knowledge that Yusuke is living with you.

You can’t stand the idea that she means the _other_ thing, your breakdown in the bathroom. Can’t imagine any way she’d have found out unless Akira tattled on you.

Not unlikely. You can’t afford to trust people.

You make pancake batter for later and coffee for yourself, so wired you put on the news even knowing it’ll make you feel worse. 

Yusuke grabbed one of your philosophy books off the shelf and brought it to the kitchen last night, not even returning it before he went to bed. You read it again as you sip at your coffee. Yusuke himself wakes up around seven, stumbling into the kitchen like a small giraffe.

“Do you want some coffee?” you ask politely. “It’s not as good as that of the cafe, but—”

Yusuke lets out a shrill little scream, and then recovers a few seconds later to say, “I didn’t know you were already awake,” reproachful like he expects to be informed of your whereabouts.

“I wake up at around five am,” you say, bemused. “Coffee?”

“No, thank you,” Yusuke replies. He switches on the lights without asking, and you slump for half a second before straightening up again. “Do you generally read in pitch dark?”

“I wasn’t reading,” you lie, putting the book away. “Pancakes, then?”

“Can you make them?” Yusuke asks dubiously.

A challenge like that can’t be turned down, though you realize about three pancakes in that it could have been a ploy to get you to make breakfast. You make two for yourself and eat a quarter of one before making your excuses to Yusuke and hurrying away. You have an actual breakfast with your father to prepare for.

Shido’s secretary has texted you an address to a restaurant a few blocks away from another one of his offices. You take a cab there, and calculate how much you’ve spent on cab fare over the past few days.

It’s an atrocious amount. You wonder if you can make your father pay for it somehow.

Breakfasts with your father are rare. He’s impossibly busy, and you don’t crave his attention as much as you had when you were younger. You’re well aware that your father used your mother, and is using you now.

But you’d told yourself there was a life you could make if you worked hard enough; one where you didn’t have to wear gloves all the time. Over the years, you’ve put that dream away in favour of other, more achievable ones. Fame and a job as a celebrity detective aren’t the trajectory in life your mother would’ve wanted for you, but it’s one you might grow to like. Enough difficult solves to go down in halls of fame. A dream where you’re never seen without gloves, and no one dares ask why.

It would be the death of you to be seen without them, though maybe that’s not the case for others like you anymore. Times have changed since your mother was your age, and children with abilities don’t need to hide so much now.

Yeah, right. Times never change so fast—the violence that had driven your mother to selling sex had killed others like you, and you’d be a fool to think that could vanish in a couple of decades. The violence is still there, subtler now. Missed promotions and sharp glares and getting beaten up by potential partners instead of strangers on the road. Not a big step up, really.

You cut those lines of thought off one by one as the cab pulls up to the restaurant. Shido is already at the table when you find it and sit down, surreptitiously checking your phone for the time. Are you late?

But you’re _early,_ like always. By about half an hour. Shido’s just been at this table for god knows how many hours already, and you’re suddenly unwilling to bet on him having any patience left.

Not that he ever does, when it comes to you.

“Order whatever you like,” Shido says crisply, gesturing at the menu in front of you.

You glance briefly through it, put off by even the small gesture of apparent kindness. “I’ll have the almond croissant,” you say. A waitress arrives seamlessly at your shoulder, noting it down. “Tea, extra sugar as well. Thank you.”

“Somewhere to be after this?” Shido asks, like he knows the answer already.

“Just homework,” you smile. “You know how it is with college.”

Shido rolls his eyes. You wonder if he’s even passed college. “Or your little friend to take care of, perhaps. Yusuke Kitagawa.”

“I’m trying to find him a hotel,” you say thinly. “I’m sure you could help.”

“Can he pay?”

You wince. “No.”

“Should’ve thought about that last week,” Shido suggests, flagging the waitress down again and pointing at something on the menu.

“I didn’t intend to take him in last week!” you protest, wrong-footed.

“That lack of planning is going to be the death of you,” Shido says.

You don’t sink lower in your seat, though you want to. Instead you take a deep breath in and another out, clench your fist in your lap, and straighten up. “Really? I would’ve thought it would be the spotlight-hogging.”

“People can die in many ways,” Shido replies. “Enough backchat. You’re not finding him a hotel.”

“What?” you ask, thrown again.

“It’s good optics,” Shido says. “An ace detective, opening his home to a starving artist.”

“Put away five pancakes this morning, he’s hardly _starving_ —” Your croissant and tea arrive, and you give the waitress a bright smile. “Thank you.”

Shido ignores this. “We’ve long discussed how to make you come off as more approachable to people your own age. You’re rather distant and cold. But having a friend your own age could repair that image in the eyes of the public. You’re to keep him. I’ll add his living costs to your bank account.”

You’re not going to win this argument. You haven’t been brought here to win this argument. You’ve been brought here so your father can give you yet another object lesson in who really controls your life, warping your decisions and making them his own.

“Fine,” you say. “Make sure you give me enough to buy him art supplies. He lost most of his.”

“Bleeding heart idiot,” Shido sneers. “You may leave.”

You haven’t taken a single bite of your croissant. You’d been waiting for it to cool, and you’re too polite to talk with your mouth full in public anyway.

You pick up your briefcase and leave.

It’s oppressively sunny outside. You wilt slightly under it but remain glad of the clothes that cover most of your skin, even if it’s hot. You don’t want to go home quite yet, but there’s nowhere else to go, so you drag yourself back to the high-rise apartment building.

Yusuke’s occupying your couch when you let yourself in, pencil flying busily across the page. “Oh, you’re back,” he says to you, and turns back to his sketching.

You stand there and contemplate the oddness of returning to a lit house, and then spend the rest of the morning working in bed. You’re seething, and you might’ve spent longer on it but Yusuke knocks on the door to ask about lunch, and you end up ordering sushi again. This time the two of you sit at the table, and Yusuke lets you flip through his sketchbook.

Most of the sketches are from before Madarame’s case broke. The ones from after are mostly of the girl you’d seen that day, and of your apartment.

“Do you know about chiaroscuro?” Yusuke asks you. _He_ has no compunctions about talking with his mouth full. You shake your head, still staring at the drawing of Yusuke’s bedroom with an unmade bed. You’ve never realized that something so ordinary could be represented with such care.

Yusuke raises his hands as though to demonstrate, and then gives that up to put more food in his mouth. “It’s all about strong, dark shadows contrasted with bright, intense light.” You flinch at the word _light._ “I was thinking about trying it out...before.”

He trails off awkwardly, looking so awfully sad that you don’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” you try, keenly aware of how useless it sounds.

“Don’t be,” Yusuke says, but he still looks miserable. “You did the right thing.”

 _For all the wrong reasons,_ you think.

“To find—” Yusuke continues, halting. “To find that I could’ve gone the rest of my life—or _years_ more, under his tutelage, believing myself privileged for it.”

“He was _stealing_ from you,” you say, helpless anger surging through you.

Yusuke shakes his head. “We never thought of it as stealing. More like—a tribute. An honour to have him believe that our work was worthy of his name.”

“Plagiarism, the highest praise of all,” you sneer.

“That was what we believed, too,” Yusuke smiles, wan and small.

You deflate, thinking about your report to your father. How Madarame killed Yusuke’s mother, the real painter of the _Sayuri._ “He didn’t even paint the _Sayuri,_ ” you say, and feel an odd rush of something when Yusuke stares at you, stricken. “That was your mother. He—he let her die, and he took the credit. The woman is holding a baby.”

“How do you know that?” Yusuke asks desperately. He’s leaning forward, eyes shining with an emotion you can’t recognize. “How does no one _else_ know that?”

“There are some things that weren’t seen as fit to release to the public,” you say, retreating from his intensity into a scripted answer. “Accusing someone of murder—especially one over seventeen years old—could well be considered slander, and I’m pretty sure it’s passed the statute of limitations anyway. His more recent crimes were more likely to lead to imprisonment, so only those were released to the public.”

“That,” Yusuke sucks in a breath. “Was it really my mother?”

You nod slowly, running over the details of the case in your head. “Madarame’s early work simply isn’t like the _Sayuri,_ and the Sayuri copies that were sold to the public were, of course, forgeries. No one bothered to look into their veracity for many years, writing off the fakes as not made by Madarame—but how would we _know_? His painting styles were ‘diverse’ due to his habit of passing off his students’ work as his own. The fact is that the earliest-dated copy of the Sayuri—which is now in police custody—is nothing like the ones that were later sold.”

“How did you put all this together?” Yusuke asks, now sounding less distraught and more fascinated. 

You can’t help preening a little, but you can’t pretend it’s your doing either. “I had help,” you say weakly, forcing down your light that’s perked up at the praise. You _did_ have help. You’d contacted over a dozen art enthusiasts and collectors, emails flying back and forth in the weeks leading up to the break.

Yusuke leans back. “I hadn’t considered that you might truly be a great detective,” he says, like this is a normal thing to say to the great detective in question whose home he’s living in rent-free. “I thought people were lying, as they sometimes do.”

“Wow, thank you.”

“But you’re amazing,” Yusuke finishes earnestly.

You shake your head, standing up to clear the plates away. “I have resources. Anyone could do what I did if they had access to the information I have. It’s not all that amazing.” Yusuke opens his mouth as though to argue, frowning, but you cut him off. It’s not really that you disagree with the praise; self-deprecation is a reflex, and the cost of recognition is eyes on you, and you’ve trained yourself out of wanting that. “Do you want to go buy art supplies?”

Yusuke’s eyes light up like his birthday has come early.

Which is how you go shopping for the second time in two days. You suggested ordering online, but Yusuke looked scandalized, so you bear the pressure of endless light and offer opinions on art supplies you’re looking up on your phone as Yusuke drags them off shelves.

Yusuke ends up with three bags before his face falls. “I don’t have any money.”

You hand the receptionist your credit card. “Don’t worry about it.” Was this what people call being a sugar daddy? Yusuke should be putting out any day now.

As soon as he puts his paintbrush down to find his dick, you think uncharitably.

The constant light is making you _remarkably_ sour. At least Yusuke is quiet on the way home, like he’s picked up on your bad mood, or more likely has his own issues to chew over.

You’d intended to work again, but you fall asleep in bed fully clothed with your laptop still open, and only wake up long after it’s dark outside. You grimace, give yourself five minutes to sit around hating yourself, and then go about changing your clothes and brushing your teeth.

Yusuke’s asleep on the couch when you go out to turn off the lights. Curled around his sketchpad, hand clutching his pencil like a child. You almost wake him up to make him go to bed, but you can’t face a conversation or human contact right now. Instead you pry the sketchbook and pencil out of Yusuke’s strong grip and set them on the table without looking at what he was drawing, and then go inside to retrieve a blanket. That you tuck carefully around Yusuke.

You lie in bed for a long time after that, thinking about your father and then nothing at all.

You slide into the routine of the week from the next morning: college, classes, homework, more homework, cancelling appointments and showing up for other ones and updating an online presence you sometimes can’t believe is how you’re seen by the world. It looks so fake it should seem insulting to the audience, but people eat it up, praise you for your positivity and willingness to share your life online.

If you were smarter you’d review Leblanc, but you don’t feel up to re-examining _that_ experience. Every time you try, all you can think of is gravity, and _can you feel it too?_

So you work on another case with Sae. Even though she’s an obnoxious colleague on the best days—not just demanding, but stubborn, convinced that she’s on the right track and everything else is a distraction—she’s also the only person smart enough to keep up with you. Working with anyone _else_ would drive both of you crazy. 

You have to go down to the SIU to talk to Sae at the end of all those emails anyway and find her working in the lounge with her sister sitting opposite her. You’ve seen her in your History elective. “Was there a bring-your-family-to-work day I wasn’t informed about?” you inquire, pulling up another chair and sitting down without being invited.

“There’d be no point informing you,” Sae replies. You can never tell if she’s being cruel intentionally or if she just never realizes how callously she comes off.

By the way her sister cringes and mutters “ _Sis,_ ” probably the latter. You ignore the sting, unbothered. “You wanted to discuss the Kaneshiro case,” you begin. “Well, I did my side of the research, but there’s not a lot we have at the moment.”

“That’s actually why Makoto is here,” Sae says. “Some children at a school she used to go to have been taken in by Kaneshiro’s activities.”

“At least, I suspect it’s him,” Makoto says. “Can I—” 

You nod, leaning forward slightly to listen better.

The information is largely useless to the unit, but you thank her for it and take your leave, heading to your draughty little corner office to retrieve some files. The official copy of the Madarame report is still lying on your desk. An idea occurs to you as you flip through it, and you stuff it into your briefcase and go down to the storage area.

The case is over. No one’s even going to miss this. You flash your ID to the cop on duty and sign it out, thinking _bleeding heart idiot._ But you know someone who can live with your idiocy even when you can’t.

Except Yusuke’s not home when you return. You check your phone frantically for messages, but there are none. You don’t even have Yusuke’s number—how could you have been _so_ idiotic? You look through the flat again, come up empty and spend several minutes hyperventilating in the hallway.

Then you go back out, walking at random, trying to put yourself in Yusuke’s head the way you sometimes manage with criminals. It doesn’t help, but eventually you end up in a part of the city you don’t recognize with little idea of the route you took to come here. It occurs to you that there’s a pulling in your chest—that it’s been there for some time, though it faded out over the past day. Now that you’re paying attention to it, you realize how utterly unable you are to resist them, to do anything but go where they’re pulling you in the hopes that the pain will recede.

The hooks lead you to Leblanc again. It’s late; the shop should be closed. It _is_ closed, the sign flipped, but you can see people through the glass panes, and one of them is Yusuke.

The others are Akira, and that blond girl from earlier.

You paste on a smile and tack it in place before knocking sharply. Akira’s already turning around and hurrying towards the door.

“Hello,” you say politely, when it opens. “Sorry to bother you, I just need to get Yusuke-kun.”

“How did you find me?” Yusuke demands. The blond girl has her arms folded across her chest. Akira looks long-suffering.

“Give an ace detective some credit,” you reply, feigning ease. “If you wanted curry so badly, we could’ve ordered in.”

“I can make some right now,” Akira interrupts.

They fill you in on what’s transpired while Akira makes curry, frowning and just as clumsy as last time. You don’t blame him; the empty despair of that pulling is starting to make your throat hurt. At least the lights in Leblanc aren’t overpowering, even if they’re heavier than those in your own flat. They’re a muted yellow, awkwardly placed so that they leave most corners untouched.

Turns out Yusuke had asked the girl—Ann Takamaki—for her number, intending to sketch her. More’s the surprise that she’d handed it over. They’d settled on a date (today) and a place (here) and Yusuke had cheerfully neglected to inform _you_ of any of this.

“Why don’t you give me your number too,” you sigh, pulling your phone out. “And I guess I should take yours as well,” you add to Akira, who drops curry powder on the counter.

“Later,” Yusuke says dismissively. He’s taken out his new sketchbook and is laying charcoals out on a table. “I would like to focus on Ann for now.”

“Uhh, you could still give him your number?” Ann says. “I can like, wait a minute.”

Yusuke gives her a blank look and then turns to recite his number to you. That done, he turns back to his charcoals, frowns and puts them away again. It’s a complete dismissal, more final than anything your father could do—Yusuke’s forgotten you exist.

You roll your eyes and sit down at the bar. “It seems I’m unwelcome no matter where I go,” you say idly, and then wonder what on earth possessed you to start with _that._

“Yusuke’s just busy,” Akira replies. He’s looking at you oddly. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes,” you reply, rather surprised by his carefulness and embarrassed by your slip-up. “I’m—sorry about shouting at you the last time we met. It must’ve been quite a shock, to follow someone intending to help them out and be met with…well.” You laugh nervously. “I promise I’m not usually quite so rude.”

“You did seem quite stressed out at the time,” Akira says, smiling crookedly at you. “No harm done.”

You nod slowly, take a deep breath. It’s so hard to think with your light pulsing like an open wound. Is it visible? What does Akira see, if it is? When you were young, you thought of your mother as an angel, haloed by the glow. You can’t imagine you’re anything as holy; there’s been something rotting inside you for as long as you can recall.

Akira puts the coffee down in front of you, and you glance at him before taking a sip. “This is amazing,” you tell him warmly, because it is—rich and sweet and satisfying.

For that you get a grin, and you smile back, oddly at ease. Enough that the next words tumble out of you: “I _can_ feel it, whatever it is, it drew me here—to you.” You take a hasty sip of your coffee, ears burning, hoping you won’t be held to the naked truth in your voice.

“It’s my ability,” Akira says, like the admission comes easily to him. He puts the pitcher down, lifting his trembling hands and holding them up in front of himself, a foot apart. You watch, fascinated—the air between his palms is warping and shimmering as though with heat, and the jug he put down rises a few inches and then settles back down.

“Telekinesis?” you ask. “I don’t think I’ve seen that before.” You’ve seen nothing, really.

Akira shakes his head. “Gravity.”

You sit up straighter, leaning forward. That’s an ability powerful enough to move mountains.

“I haven’t always had it,” he continues. “A while before I came to Tokyo.”

“That’s interesting,” you say. You’re uncomfortable—you know that this is where you reveal your own light, but you can’t stomach the thought of anyone knowing. No one’s known about it since your mother—and, you remember, the social worker on your case, who redacted that part of your file to increase your chances of being adopted. Not that that worked. Other than them, your father’s the only person who knows, and he hates you for it. For how useless your ability makes you. 

You’re saved from having to think about it further by Ann shrieking, “You _pervert!_ ” behind you.

Akira hurries around the counter, and you turn. Yusuke is standing with a look of righteous indignation, and Ann looks extremely annoyed. “Everything alright?” Akira asks, in a tone that implies he’ll make it so if it isn’t already.

“He wants to draw me _nude,_ ” Ann says, scandalized.

“I simply wish to get rid of anything that stands in the way of true artistic revelation—” Yusuke begins, but Ann just looks even angrier. 

You don’t blame her. But you also don’t want to deal with a dead flatmate, so you start: “I don’t think that’s what Yusu—”

“Yusuke’s not thinking straight,” Akira says firmly. “He hasn’t eaten dinner yet. And you haven’t either, Ann. Do you want some curry?”

She blows a lock of hair out of her face in irritation. “Fine. You,” she points a long finger at Yusuke. “Are not drawing me nude. Or _anybody,_ okay?”

Yusuke huffs, looking conflicted for a moment. The promise of curry wars with the indignance of his explanation being cut out, but as you expect his stomach wins out and he sits back primly in his seat. 

Akira nods and wanders off to plate curry. “Akechi, do you want curry?” he calls from inside the kitchen.

Before you can respond, Ann pipes up, waving you over with an exaggerated plea of, “Akechi-kun, don’t leave me alone over here!”

She’s mostly ignored you prior to this, but you guess she’s been distracted by Yusuke’s attention. “I would never,” you say gravely, and she giggles charmingly before making room for her next to you.

Yusuke still looks baffled.

Akira returns with curry (does he know how to cook anything else?) and as he sets a plate in front of you it occurs to you that it’s nearly ten pm, and the last thing you ate was lunch. So you dig in tentatively, and immediately find that it’s too spicy for you when you start coughing at the first bite.

“Oh no, are you okay?” Ann asks.

“I’m—fine,” you gasp. Your eyes are watering. You suspect it’s not even _that_ spicy, you’ve just always been sensitive to hot flavors.

Yusuke’s already starting eating, like you’re not having a crisis directly in front of him.

Akira returns suddenly with a mug of something, and you stare suspiciously at it before taking a sip. You honestly didn’t even notice him leaving. It’s plain milk, and though you despise the flavor of that too you can’t deny that it soothes the awful burn in your throat.

“No curry for you, then,” Akira remarks.

Your palms are sweating inside your gloves, and your clothes feel too tight. For a second you wonder if you’re having some kind of allergic reaction to the curry, but you don’t have any allergies. “Can I step outside for a minute?” you ask.

“Was it that spicy?” Ann says, sounding perplexed. “I’ve never had a problem.”

“I don’t think it’s spicy,” Yusuke says with his mouth full.

Akira just nods, moving out of the way to let you hurry outside. You step out and feel as suffocated as you did inside—look around frantically and end up taking yourself twenty feet down the road out of the circles of streetlight.

It’s only there that you manage to catch your breath, head pounding and stomach still aching with that pull. You force yourself to ignore that for a few minutes, remembering instead how to pin your light back inside yourself. You’re not sure you’re doing a very good job, but hopefully people in this neighborhood don’t make a habit of coming down this road at night. Or maybe they do—

The pull goes slack, and you look up to see Akira silhouetted against the last streetlight. The image of it expands to meet you, turns you into light on his shoulders. You rest there for a second, some welcome thing with feathers and no weight to speak of—and then you blink and you’re back where you started, shaking inside your burdened body.

“Hey,” Akira says easily. He’s only a few feet from you now, rocking on his heels. “Is it just me or…are you glowing?”

 _Shit_ , you think. “It’s,” you start, and then fumble embarrassingly. “I have an ability.”

He’s closer, suddenly, that pull in you drawing him near. And _still_ it hurts. You stare at him, how he’s almost the same height as you or just a little taller, and feel yourself drowning.

You don’t know _why._ It’s not the worst thing to not know, except you’re you and you hate being ignorant. You hate that you want him near you so badly and can’t justify being in the same room for him for more than an hour.

“You look tired,” Akira says finally. “Do you want to go home?”

God, he asks you that like he can _take you there._ Like he knows where it is. “Not like this,” you whisper. “I can’t go home like this.”

“Like this?”

“ _Glowing,_ ” you hiss, like he’s the idiot here.

“Oh,” he says, and then he doesn’t know what to say so he just stands there. It’s unbearable. It’s utterly unbearable, and it’s crushing you, but you can also, at last, _breathe_.

You can breathe. You close your eyes and drag the light underwater again, inhale by exhale.

“Oh,” he says again. He’s squinting at you now.

“Thank you for waiting,” you tell him. “I should be going now, though. I apologize for—everything.”

Akira’s giving you an odd look, which is the worst kind. “Can I walk you to the station?” he asks though, and you’re not kind enough to refuse so you simply nod, and you don’t remember if you thank him but then you’re walking back to the cafe to collect Yusuke and Ann (and there you learn that Akira would walk Ann to the station anyway, so it’s no great sacrifice for him to come with you two) and Ann and Yusuke have mostly made up and are now discussing sushi.

Ann tells you about a place you should totally try out, and Akira chimes in about conveyor belt sushi; you can’t pay attention because you’re too busy holding it all inside you.

All this _light._ It makes the backs of your eyes hurt.

You’re alone in the living room of your apartment before you remember the odd look in his eyes as he watched you bring yourself under control and connect it to the way his hands trembled lifting that jug.

Not odd. Just an admiration you’re deeply unused to seeing directed at you with such genuineness.

You wish you could find him and tell him the truth. You wonder what you’d say, now that you’re by yourself and full of explanations again. _I can’t use it. I never learnt to use it. I hold it in and it hurts and I hold it harder. I can’t be like you with it. I would never have told you I had it. I still can’t. It revealed itself to you, but I wanted to keep hiding it._

_I think the hiding is going to kill me._

That night you sleep without the gloves, hands hidden under layers of blankets so the light can’t keep you awake.

You’ve got class the next morning, so you forgo breakfast and make do with coffee. You hate your early classes with a burning passion, but there’s no other way you’d have time to work with the SIU if you didn’t finish your classes by about halfway through the work day. You review your reading over breakfast and wait until Yusuke careens into the kitchen to say, “You’ll be on your own all day today. I have things to do.”

Yusuke pauses in the doorway. “Oh,” he says, surprised. “I should be fine on my own. I collected references last night, though not enough, so I can paint today.”

You ignore this, lean down and take the roll out of your briefcase. “I imagine this belongs to you.”

There’s a peculiar satisfaction to the sheer _wonder_ that spreads across Yusuke’s face. “Is this—is this the original?”

“Yes,” you answer. “It was with the department, but the case is closed, and you’re her son.”

“Thank you,” Yusuke says hoarsely. 

His shoulders shake as he ruffles through your fridge. You stare at the lanky lines of his body and wonder if he’s ever drawn himself, if he can stand the sight of his face the way you can’t. He turns just as you’re contemplating the dregs of your coffee, wondering if you can delay a little longer. You have no real desire to face the day.

“We’re out of food,” Yusuke tells you. “I intended to tell you yesterday, but you weren’t home.”

This isn’t unexpected; you order in most of your food. “I can get some things later,” you say awkwardly, though you have little idea what people need to subsist on. “I can get some later today, after work,” you offer.

“Only if it’s not too much trouble,” Yusuke says earnestly.

You shrug. “The other option is starving, which is rather more troublesome. I’ll make a list, and you can text me anything you want.”

“I see.” There’s an abstracted look in Yusuke’s eyes, a faint frown pinching his eyebrows. “I’ve starved before, it’s not a big deal.”

“So have I,” you say tartly. “And it is.” You dislike eating for reasons you can’t name, but for all that you skip meals you find little valour in it—it’s just something you do, the way you hide and hate yourself. And then you recall what else you knew about Madarame; that he was an ascetic in appearance, enforcing a lifestyle of simplicity and privation on his students because he thought it encouraged artistic vision. “Just because Madarame was cruel to you doesn’t mean you can let others do the same.”

Yusuke smiles. “I am telling you,” he points out. 

You look down and finish your coffee. You have two submissions and an active case to think about, and you’d rather not face the way Yusuke thinks you’re better than you are.

It’s still an annoyance to detour to the grocery store thrice a week, wandering around the premises trying to find everything, but—it’s nothing less than what you owe him; with everything that keeps you busy, living with Yusuke is about half as bad as you expected it to be. He’s spacey and leaves paint everywhere and forgets to turn off the lights, but he’s company, and you’d resigned yourself to loneliness until you died. You no longer dread returning home quite so much.

That dread always felt strange. You need a place that’s just yours, somewhere you can keep the lights turned down low, but you hadn’t realized how much returning to darkness unnerved you.

Your childhood home had always been full of light—your mother’s, spilling out of every cracked door and half-open curtain. Like living inside a kaleidoscope. You can’t imagine how much it hurt her to hide it every time she went out.

By the time she died, she hadn’t left the house in months, lights spinning louder and faster and brighter every day. And then one night you’d returned home and it had been—

Dark. Dark as night.

You carried that fear for so long it became another broken part of you.

Maybe returning to a lit house isn’t so bad. You have to hide more than you did before, but you resent it less. You’ve never really resented having to hide, anyway, accepted it as your fate and let it overtake you.

Yusuke finds a frame for the _Sayuri_ and hangs it up on your wall. You stare at her for a long time before asking, “Aren’t you afraid of light damage?”

“No,” Yusuke says. “It’s an oil painting, it can handle sunlight. The oil insulates it.”

You nod slowly.

“Besides,” Yusuke continues. “She looks like she belongs there.”

You disagree with that, but you don’t know how to say it without sounding pathetic, so you let Yusuke admire her a little longer and slip away to order dinner.

The world goes on, despite every little change being wrought on your home. You tend to eat more than once a day now because Yusuke is tragically inept at taking care of himself consistently and the thought of leaving him starving horrifies you, and you rearrange your living room with Yusuke’s help one afternoon so you can position the couch you usually work on to face a wall that doesn’t have the Sayuri on it. The new layout gives Yusuke more space near the window, and he draws back the curtains and sets his easel in a patch of sunlight. You get used to his presence there.

You hide yourself constantly, now. You’ve never known any other way of existing, and holding in the light is second nature to you—what’s a few hours longer when you’ve always thought it undeserving of freedom? If you glow, you glow a faint pink quietly at night in your room with the curtains drawn, and you don’t. Apart from the way you slipped up around Akira, your control’s as perfect as ever.

That doesn’t mean you stop worrying about it, but despite the anxiety there’s a strange peace to cohabitation. You’ve never considered that someone might not be deterred by your peculiarities, that they’d live with you week after week by choice.

Yusuke branches out from sushi—he’s much more experimental with food than you are. You’ve been perfectly satisfied with the same three things for breakfast for several years. Yusuke introduces more items into your menu than you can count, and a few of them you order so often that you cave and learn to cook them. You have to be careful about following the recipe, and not allowing Yusuke’s artistry into the kitchen as you’re cooking, and they never seem to turn out as well as they could, but Yusuke appears thrilled by your attempts, and you almost don’t resent how much cooking eats into your time.

At least eating more means you’re sleeping better. You’ve never drawn that connection before. Your ability never gets easier to bear—if anything it’s _worse_ —but you have more energy to deal with it, and that’s something. An entirely unexpected benefit. Maybe you deserve one of those.

Some guilt about how little of yourself you give him drives you to watch documentaries on art in the living room, where he can find you when he wants to; he elects to join you in no discernable pattern, but it’s surprisingly pleasant to watch them with him with a handspan of distance between his bony shoulder and yours. The concepts and history find their way into your conversations, and his shameless intensity melts the edges of your resistance, stone turning into wax under his clever fingers.

Akira Kurusu has your number now, too. You find your phone filling up with messages—photos of his cat, photos of a plant growing under his window, random texts when he’s bored asking you about your day or telling you about his. Corny jokes you’ll never admit to finding funny.

You try not to respond to every message but you can’t help yourself, sometimes.

 **From: Akechi** — 7:09PM  
_That wasn’t even a joke._ _  
__Try harder next time, Kurusu._

 **From: Akira** — 7:10PM  
_you like them :P admit it_

How can you not argue with _that_? He’s engaging and charming, and you like having someone to talk to when you’re between classes, or on the subway.

And then you look up and it’s autumn, and Yusuke’s complaining that the sunshine shifted too far for him to work by the window now. “Next year,” you tell him absently, and your heart lurches sickeningly.

 _Next year, and next year, and the year after that._ How many before Yusuke moves out and takes with him your excuses for not spending every evening lonely?

You’ve gotten used to someone being there when you look up. You don’t know if you can pull that addiction out of yourself, now. The thought of being alone again frightens you, and you hurry back to your room without bothering to explain yourself to Yusuke (who’s used to this by now and often does the same himself, sometimes in the middle of sentences).

Some part of you wants to text Akira about this, ask him what he thinks, but you try not to unload your problems on him more than you can help. You still end up doing it, though he says he doesn’t mind.

Your phone pings with a message, but you ignore it. Grab your laptop from your desk and find some jazz music to play while you work. You’ve got an essay to do for your Literary Theory class, and you’d like to get it done this afternoon.

Despite your earlier panic—which would once have lingered with you for hours—you manage to relax a little.

That is, until a knock on your door interrupts you. You pause the music and look up, irritated.

Yusuke never knocks. He usually waits for you to come out on your own, except for that one time when he screamed because he found a spider in his bathtub.

So you open it, and find Yusuke staring at you with an uncharacteristic expression on his face. “Yes?” you ask crisply, and then belatedly identify the expression as worry. “Did something happen?” Now _you’re_ getting worried, because it isn’t like him to be so—like _this._ You hardly know what _this_ is, just that it’s never been directed at you and you don’t like it. 

“I was looking at the news,” Yusuke says quietly. “I’m so sorry, Akechi.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” you demand.

“I never knew,” Yusuke continues. “I’ve lived here for months and I never knew—”

You’re confused and annoyed by his refusal to explain, and turn around to grab your own phone. It’s drowning in messages, and you scroll through a dozen without learning anything important before coming across a mention on twitter that makes your blood turn to ice.

 **disaster yuki** @disasteryuki74  
_@crowgoro_ is it true that you have an ability?

It quotes an article that you click with hands that feel too numb to do anything right. The headline reads _Leak at Government Agency Reveals Hundreds of Ability Users._

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck._

You can hardly process what’s happening. A leak that massive would put every ability user in Japan at risk. You’re probably not even the one hit hardest by all of this, but the article talks about how the files were leaked online early this morning, and lists the names of famous Japanese ability users.

There’s a couple singers on the list, an actor you know won an Emmy for something or other, a retired and disgraced politician. _Your_ name. Seeing it feels like a punch to the face.

More names are on the list, but you’re not looking anymore. You sit down on the bed and close your eyes and try to contemplate what you’ll do next. It’s up to you to decide—your father never hired you a publicist, and it’s too late to find one now.

 _Shido is going to kill me,_ you think.

You have no time to dwell on your impending demise. It’s up to you to manage this crisis for yourself, so you ignore Yusuke’s fumbling apologies and kick him out of the room. Throw yourself into a mode of work reserved for when you’re just prior to a deadline, not in the shockwave after.

But you adjust, grimly, force your numb fingers to type an email to the SIU confirming that you’ll be at work as usual on Monday, and then track down the leaked files to read them for yourself.

It’s enraging. You’ve long since abandoned being angry on your own behalf—anger makes the light pop in ways you can’t afford—but you can muster up enormous rage for the hundreds of people across Japan who will lose their homes and jobs and _lives_ to an uncalled-for invasion of their privacy.

The website that published the leak states their reasons as _truth and transparency,_ and it makes you laugh bitterly to yourself.

If they want _truth and transparency,_ you can fucking give it to them. 

You scroll through your messages, at all the networks and interviewers you’ve worked with in the past reaching out to you for a statement. One of the names catches your eye, and you run it through the database of leaked names to confirm your suspicions.

That’s the one you agree to, setting a date for tomorrow. It helps that it’s one of the largest networks to send you a request. 

You spend the rest of the night drafting up an appropriate version of your life. Something marketable, just pretty enough to draw attention and sympathetic enough to keep people on your side. You can spin facts the right way, cherry-pick your sordid history until what you have is good enough to sell to the country. You’ve never told anyone about your ability, even now. People just found out around you.

And now _everyone_ knows, and your only plan for spinning this into success is to bank on the fact that you’re harmless and clever and likeable in just the right proportions.

Your father really _is_ going to kill you. But you feel too reckless to care about that right now.

Reckless, yes, and tired. _So fucking tired._ Your eyelids feel weighed down by rocks, even though you’re aware you’re too wired to sleep. Your stomach is cramping from all the meals you’ve missed, but you make yourself lie down in bed and revise your scripted story in your head until an uneasy sleep overtakes you.

“It’s fine,” you tell Yusuke the next morning, making pancakes. “No, _really_.”

Yusuke frowns loudly behind you. You put a stack of pancakes in front of him and hope it quiets him down a little.

It doesn’t. His worry is palpable.

You don’t know what to do with being worried about, so you ignore it. The interview’s at eleven, and you haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.

“Thank you for agreeing to this,” the interviewer says, when you’re seated primly under bright heavy lights. You can’t remember whether you did eat breakfast. You can’t remember why it matters. Your head is full of shards of glass. “This must be an incredibly hard time for you.”

“Well,” you begin. “I dare say I don’t have it as bad as most people in positions similar to mine.”

She gets right into it, which you appreciate. You’ve spent time developing this viewpoint, and you put it across in bite-sized pieces. There’s a lot of ground to cover, though, as you wind between small talk and jokes and questions about your life as an ability user. Those should be the hardest to answer, but you’ve spent the longest refining them in your head, and you’ve never had trouble speaking to a crowd.

And then she asks, “Do you think this will promote, as the anonymous source said, _truth and transparency_?”

You take a deep breath. “No. To create truth and transparency in our society is a task far greater than publishing the names of people who have always lived under enormous risk. Who are now in _greater_ danger, thanks to this leak.”

“That’s a bold stance,” the interviewer says. You think her name is Mitsuhara. “A lot of people are saying this is information that should always have been available.”

“Why should it? Our medical histories are not a matter of public record, despite arguably affecting those around ourselves. Why should abilities be any different? There has not been an ability user related accident in Japan in five years, and the last incident was a child too young to know better.” You pause for a beat. “There are moments when we must make decisions, as a nation. We can choose to welcome people who have been taught to live in fear of themselves, and show them they have nothing to be scared of—or we can turn on them for hiding when they’d never been allowed to do anything else, and let them know they were right to be scared of us. I know what I’m here to ask for.” You smile at the audience, doing your best to project precocious innocence. You don’t think you believe a word of what you’re saying. “We’re only human, in the end.”

“That,” Mitsuhara says warmly. “Was very well-said. Thank you, Akechi-kun.” She turns to the audience. “I have never spoken about this, but my own sister—” her voice wavers slightly. “—Is an ability user. She’s only nine. I think—I think Akechi-kun’s words today would mean a lot to her.”

The rest is formality. You convey your personal regards to Mitsuhara’s sister, talk a little more about your childhood (only the good parts) and then you’re free to go.

It’s easy to feel like you’ve done something. You know how unreliable that feeling is, though, so you let yourself bask in it all the way home and then let go of it. You have more work to do. If you get four hours of consecutive sleep this week you’ll be lucky.

You open the door to your apartment, and walk right into Yusuke’s arms.

There’s a moment where no part of you processes what’s happening and all you can think is, _why won’t Yusuke get out of my way?_ And then he puts his arms around you and your brain kicks into overdrive, trying to figure out how to deal with something that hasn’t happened in six years at the least.

Probably longer. You don’t know how to relax at all, so you just freeze. He’s as stiff and clumsy as you, and you both part awkwardly after a few more seconds.

You pat him tentatively on the arm and go inside to make yourself from coffee. You’re vaguely aware that you’re treating him terribly, but you have no idea how to drag your mind off the track it’s running down, and you can’t figure out how to give him what he wants right now. You’re too busy trying to figure out an entire country.

He figures it out for you.

“I want to show you something,” he says, quite bluntly, while you’re taking off your shoes.

“Not now, Yusuke,” you reply distractedly, trying to type your phone’s password in with the hand that isn’t untying your shoelaces.

Yusuke looms quietly and radiates disappointment. It’s extremely effective; you follow after him without a word, to his bedroom.

The artwork’s changed since you were last here. New pieces are stuck to the walls and litter the floor. Many of them are of Ann; some of them are of Akira, of the blond boy you saw only once. Your heart stutters awkwardly when you realize you’re missing, and that the gap is seamless.

You swallow back your envy and try to focus. “What did you want to show me?” you ask.

He rummages through the cupboard for a minute before coming out with a painting. He hands it to you with the wrong side up, and your throat closes as you turn it over.

You don’t know what you thought you’d see. Your breath hitches in your chest.

When you first saw his work, you noted the care and delicacy with which he painted light. This is—perhaps the pinnacle of that, the most beautiful representation of it you can imagine even though your mind would never have come up with something so—so tender and perfect.

It’s a painting of a firefly, enormous and suspended in darkness. Its glow is red and purple, fading out in concentric circles from its abdomen. Its head is shrouded in darkness, the light catching and dissolving in its sad eyes.

“Oh,” you mumble. “Yusuke, this is—this is beautiful work.”

“I know,” he says plainly. “I worked hard on it.”

You smile, or try to smile. You can’t seem to tear your eyes away from it.

“I want you to have it,” he continues, in that same blunt tone. “A painting for a painting.”

You look up at last, astonished. “But—”

He shakes his head. “Take it,” he says firmly, then hesitates. “Light is…fundamental to art. It’s how we see and how everything is seen. I never realized, before this, how much darkness makes art too.”

You’re feeling too much to think or talk, a loss for words like a vice around your lungs. That he tries to see you is more than you know how to live with. “I see,” you say at last, but you don’t. Not really.

He pats your shoulder, awkward and gentle, and you flee back to your room with the painting.

You don’t know what to do with it. You love it too much to keep looking at it, though, so you wrap it carefully in newspaper and put it away. The version of it inside your head anchors you as time blurs by you, every second embedding itself before you for an hour before passing by like it never existed. 

You go to work, and everyone stares at you as you go about your usual routine. Sae asks you point blank if your ability is going to be a problem, and you look her dead in the eye as you say, “It hasn’t been until now.”

That’s enough, to her credit, and you both begin work on a case unconnected to the previous one.

You give another interview, and tell endless strangers about an ability you can’t use. You talk about how people with abilities are just people, how they’re exactly as harmful or harmless as the rest of society. You pore over videos of yourself, grimly charting down things you need to improve on. 

It’s six days before you have a Sunday without any interview, classes, or other commitments.

You’ve been blowing your father’s secretary off with screenshots of your calendar, and you should message her, but you’re not in the mood to die today.

You’re in the mood to _sleep._ You don’t know how much rest you’ve gotten lately, but you’re shaking with relief as you crawl under the sheets after breakfast and fall into a deep, dreamless slumber.

When you wake up, your first thought is Akira for some reason. You’re still not conscious, so you drift in a vague unease about him, wondering how he’s doing. You’ve been blowing him off for who-knows how long. You can’t afford any weaknesses, and Akira’s not a weakness but he _is_ someone who could be used against you. And he’s at risk in all of this, too—a risk you have no desire to compound by associating you two in the eyes of the public. 

And then there’s _Yusuke,_ Yusuke who you’ve barely exchanged a dozen words with after he gave you that painting.

The shame wakes you up a little more, and you pull yourself out of bed and to the living room, where Yusuke is painting near the window.

You sit down on the couch and wait for him to notice you.

“Hello,” Yusuke says, several minutes later. “Are you okay?”

You smile at him, because you owe him that much. “Yes, of course,” you start. “I need—I need to explain some things to you.”

“You don’t have to,” Yusuke says, attention turning back to his painting. Except you know he’s still listening, still open to talking. He just doesn’t like looking at the people he’s talking to; you’ve gotten used to this like you’ve gotten used to all his other peculiarities. “I’ve been watching the news.”

“There’s a lot I don’t say there,” you reply, scared and thrilled at the implication that you’d tell Yusuke things you don’t let other people know. “I don’t—my mother wasn’t a nice person. She was, but she also wasn’t.”

That’s not what you meant to say. You fall silent, trying to parse truth from lies inside yourself.

“I came back one night,” you continue, voice pathetically small. “I came back home one day and our house was dark. She was dead. She’d been dead for a while, but I still—” You can’t describe the horror of it, even now. Seeing her there, knowing she’d never be alive again.

You were very young, but you’d known she was dying. You’d known, and so you hadn’t reacted like most children did. You hadn’t begged her to be alive.

You’d crawled into her bed next to her and memorized the sound of a still heart.

And then you’d found her phone and called your father.

You realize, suddenly, that you’ve been quiet for several minutes. That Yusuke’s still waiting. “Sorry,” you tell him. “That’s not what I came here to say. I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you all week.”

Yusuke shrugs. “That’s it?”

You stare at him. “I think so, yes.”

“I’ve ignored you for longer than this before,” Yusuke points out. “And for less reason.” 

This is true, but you’d never thought of those two things as being in the same ballpark until he pointed out the connection. Strange how these things manage to elude you.

“But since you’re here now, would you like to see what I’m painting?”

God, you _don’t_ deserve Yusuke. You’re sure of that, and you walk over to his easel to see what he’s wrought this time. It’s Ann again, his perennial muse, this time in a style reminiscent of Rembrandt. Thick, heavy, dark colours that are simultaneously incongruent and deliriously beautiful.

You tell him as much. He smiles at you, and then launches into a bitter and scathing critique of his own work.

After days of running around, it’s hard to contend with free time. You open the fridge four times even though you’re not hungry, then finally settle down at the kitchen table with your laptop to open the emails you’ve been neglecting.

The progression of messages is nothing short of fascinating. The first one from your father informs you that you’ve been exposed, and tells you that you’re on your own dealing with it and that he plans to cut you off at the earliest. It’s almost amusing; you’ve signed an NDA declaring that you won’t tell anyone he’s your father, and you have no plans to renege on that. His career is doomed to fail, and he won’t take you down with him if you’ve got any say in it. The second one, sent after the Mitsuhara interview, serves you legal papers to look over. You mark that one for later perusal. The third one tells you that you’ve done ‘an astonishingly decent job’ spinning this to your advantage, and maybe he’ll reconsider cutting you off if you reply to his emails.

It’s depressing, to say the least. You’ve always known you’ll never be enough for him, that no amount of perfection will make him want you. Sometimes you’re sure you’ve given up on it and no longer care, and other times it makes you want to scream, _shouldn’t it mean something that I’m your son?_

But he has a daughter too, and you know he cares about her as little as he cares about you. That’s just how he is. You should be more used to it by now. Like everything else, though, this never stops hurting.

You rub at your eyes, annoyed and exhausted by the glare of the screen. Even dimmed all the way, you’re still oversensitive to it, and light has been heavy these past few days. Heavier than usual. You can’t remember it ever being otherwise even though you _know_ it’s only gotten worse. You don’t know what’s wrong with you, that such simple matters as memory and scale of pain continually elude you.

No part of you wants to keep thinking about this, so despite the persistent grief you force yourself to run through everything you need to do. Yusuke will be wanting dinner soon, and you don’t remember the last time you bought groceries. 

Which explains why the fridge looks so sparse, at least.

You order dinner on your phone, and then go through your messages. You’ve been ignoring Akira all week, too. Guilt makes your forearms ache, and you find his name in your phone and look through what he’s sent you.

There’s only one. 

**From Akira** — 16/10 _  
__are u alright?_

That was four days ago. You try to take stock of yourself, to answer honestly, but the truth is that you don’t know. If anyone else was asking, you wouldn’t pause a beat before saying you’re fine.

 **From Akechi** — 6:34PM  
_I promise I haven’t forgotten about you_ _  
__I’m just awfully busy._

 **From Akira** — 6:53PM  
_dont worry about it!_ _  
__how are u?_

You don’t know when you became someone people worried about. You put your phone down and return your laptop to your room, shower as fast as you can and dress yourself. You really need groceries, and you know you can’t avoid meeting Shido for much longer, so doing this tomorrow is out of the question.

Yusuke offers to come with you as you’re heading out, but you shake your head. When you check your phone again in the elevator, you have a missed call from Akira.

You call him back. You’re not _that_ much of a coward. “Hello,” you say.

“Hey,” Akira replies, sounding distracted. “I’m feeding my cat, gimme a minute.”

“Take your time,” you say, amused. 

It hardly takes a few seconds. You’re on the pavement now, being careful to watch out for cars and signals. “So,” Akira says finally. “Finally decided to stop ignoring me every time I ask how you’re doing?”

“It wasn’t a deliberate choice,” you protest. “There’s a lot going on, in case you missed it.”

Akira snorts. “Sojiro’s been turning on the news every night and then fussing at me like I’m a kid afterwards. I can hardly miss it.”

It takes you a second to place Sojiro as the owner of Leblanc. 

“He’s afraid I’ll get fired,” Akira continues.

“Isn’t he your employer?”

“Yeah, but I have other part-time jobs.”

You put that information away in the little box under ice where you have his name and the peculiar grey of his eyes, and chat idly with him all the way to the store. And inside it, too, as you put things into your cart.

He tells you about how he came by his cat (“I was new to Tokyo and he just adopted me”), that he doesn’t actually need glasses and only wears them to not intimidate people (which is so charming you pause with a carton of juice in your hand to process it) and that his favorite place in Tokyo is the entrance to the subway in Shibuya (which, _what_?).

But you listen to him intently, because you love the sound of his voice, and the last voice you loved was your mother’s and hers was high and sweet and nothing at all like Akira’s.

Anyway, it’s a good distraction from the pressure of the overhead LEDs and from the weird looks the other shoppers are giving you, even though you’ve been buying here for _years_ and they should be used to it by now. You want to snap at them, but you’d rather let Akira ramble at you.

All done, you head to check-out, making your excuses to Akira and promising him you’ll call again soon. You’ll probably do one better—you need good coffee and haven’t had any in too long—and you’re looking forward to his surprise when you show up.

You vaguely recognize the check-out clerk, so hopefully you won’t have to deal with her getting all awkward as you’re unloading things from your cart onto the counter. 

“Um,” she says. You look up, annoyed. She fumbles, and then settles on, “Goro Akechi, right?”

“Yes,” you say, crisply impatient. You just want your groceries, for heaven’s sake. “Is there a problem?”

She looks flustered. “We, uh, we don’t serve people with abilities,” her voice goes up slightly at the end like it’s a question. “So we’re—I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

You blink at her, briefly floored. You were so busy basking in how much you like talking to Akira that you forgot you live in a world where everyone knows who and _what_ you are, which is something they don’t want around. You’ve never really been wanted, and you should be more used to it by now, but your heart is beating very fast, and you don’t know what to say. You never know what to say to _blatant_ admissions that you’re unwanted; it takes you back to your father, to foster home after foster home, to a nice lady telling you you’re too old to belong anywhere.

But there’s a line of people behind you, and white noise and the dull weight of light aside you don’t want to hold it up. It’s that vague fear of inconveniencing people that gets you to ask, “Will you put these away, or should I?”

“I’ll do it,” she says quickly, shoving everything you’d put on the counter back in your cart.

You don’t look back as you leave. Your cheeks are burning, and you feel oddly hollow inside. You go straight home, and it’s only when you’re in bed again that you think, _I’m going to have to find a new grocery store._ And then, _shit, I still don’t have groceries._

Yusuke doesn’t ask you where the groceries are the next morning, and you don’t tell him. You feel strangely paralyzed by shame. How do you let such a story out? You can’t imagine telling anybody—some loss of words clogs your throat, and prevents the truth from escaping. 

And in any case, you don’t want them worrying about you. 

So you look up other grocery stores on your phone, and think about how everyone knows you have an ability. You curl in on yourself, drawing back everything you’ve allowed yourself to feel and reveal around Yusuke. It’s unbearable to be known, even worse to be pitied for what you are. You don’t know if Yusuke is inclined to pitying you, but you don’t want to find out the hard way. You retreat behind your media personality, and force yourself to forget about your ability. It’s never done you any good and it won’t start now.

The light still hurts. You can hardly think around it, some nights. It fills your lungs and vaporizes them until you imagine you’re immune to drowning.

You promised to go into work on Monday, and you will, but the prospect is terrifying. Time is slipping through your fingers, and you don’t know what to do about that.

It’s not as bad as you thought it would be. It’s worse. Your desk has been tampered with, and you’re suddenly glad that your paranoia made you invest in changing the locks on the drawers. You can’t sit at it for a minute to catch your breath before you become painfully aware of how everyone’s looking at you, like you’re the visible kind of freak. The kind you’ve spent so _long_ trying not to be. How does _anybody_ deal with this? You feel like a criminal among them, and you haven’t even done anything _wrong._

The director confirms that you still have your job, but he doesn’t seem pleased to allow you even that. You’re well aware that your father pulled strings to let you onto crime scenes in the first place, amused by your proclivity towards difficult cases, and that was going to bite you back at some point, but you didn’t expect it to be like _this._

You want to scream that they’d be _nothing_ without you. You know it’s true.

Before you and Sae came to the SIU, it was a joke of a department—more for catching the dregs of difficult cases no one else could solve. It’s your combined streak of near-perfect solves, your knack for the truth over easy answers and closed files, that’s earned the department its reputation for being trustworthy. A cut above the rest. Sae prosecutes cases, and you make sure she’s never after the wrong person. You’re a _hell_ of a team and everyone here fucking knows it.

They _know_ it, and they still act like they’ve never seen you before. Like you’re an interloper.

Sae is the only one who will talk to you, and that’s just the one hushed conversation in a corridor as you’re leaving. “I was told to stay away from you,” she says, and then grimaces. “I’ll treat you to sushi after all of this is over. Stay safe.”

Curt as ever, like it’ll ever be over. You appreciate it less than you resent the breaking of the only work relationship you ever allowed yourself to form. You’re never trusting her again.

Fuck you, then. Fuck your ability and fuck the department and your father and people’s shitty little prejudices and fuck _you_ most of all, for daring to think things would work out for you. You’re such a _fool._

You try to distract yourself with classes, and it works. Exams are drawing near, and studying for them is a convenient excuse to get you out of sharing space with Yusuke, even if it makes you feel increasingly like a stranger in your own home.

A stranger in your home and a stranger everywhere else. You cut your routines down to size, stop going to places you haven’t extensively researched beforehand to make sure they won’t kick you out for being an ability user. It wears on you—you can hardly stand the subway but cab rides are worse, and walking is painful—that leaves out the jazz club (which isn’t unfriendly to ability users but requires more travelling than you can stand), the shop where you get your books (no information available), the cafe near campus (too many staring kids).

It’s _fine._ You have your headphones and e-books and it’s not like the campus cafe’s coffee is anything worth drinking after Leblanc.

You don’t dare go to Leblanc either. You know they won’t kick you out. You’re just afraid, and you hate being afraid.

“Are you alright?” Yusuke asks you one morning.

You pull your gloves on tighter. You’ve got a test today, and you’ve been up half the night studying. You still feel like you’re going to fail, and someone’s going to call your mother and ask why you’re not doing well. Even though that only happened once, and you don’t recall how your mother reacted.

“I’m fine,” you say. “I have an exam today.”

“I see,” Yusuke says, clearly unconvinced. “Best of luck.” His voice is opaque, and it makes you anxious. You don’t want him to be angry at you. You hate when he’s upset.

And then you take a step back from that thought and survey it, disgusted with yourself. You’re pathetic, wanting him to like you and care about you without reciprocating in the least. You don’t know how to fix it though, and you’re too much of a coward to ask him, so you make your excuses about needing to be in class early and gulp your coffee before you leave.

Your father isn’t helping. Since that last near-disastrous meeting where he told you he wasn’t going to cut you off but that he was going to reduce your stipend, you’ve been scrambling for an alternate means of making money. You’re aware that you don’t _need_ to—you own the flat you live in, and your job as a detective pays you enough to support yourself and Yusuke. But you’re obsessed with saving money just in case something goes wrong, and for the last few years you’ve been siphoning the money your father gives you into a savings account.

You’re aware your paranoia about finances isn’t normal. Yusuke suffers no similar affliction, despite never having more than a few thousand yen to his name at any point in time.

It’s not like you have the time to work another job, anyway, so you quell your anxiety by force and focus on upcoming papers, dreading the vacations that will bring with them free time you don’t know how you’ll deal with.

And if all of _that_ wasn’t enough to keep you stressed, that pull in your stomach dragging you in Akira’s direction is back—if it had ever been gone. You think it faded for a time, but now it’s here and it _hurts_. You’re always ignoring it and it refuses to give up, so you learn to wrap yourself around the pain and live with it.

You’re mostly failing, but you’re determined to pretend it doesn’t matter. You respond to Akira’s messages just enough to keep him from thinking you’re dead, and leave it at that.

 _He_ doesn’t, though.

It’s the last day of your exams, and dawdled outside the college building as though it would make you feel better—but there are too many whispers around you these days, and they’re all the wrong kind. You don’t even have enough energy to deal with the thin winter sun after staying up nearly the entire night studying, and your unwillingness to go home won’t save you from any of your problems, so you finally drag yourself back.

The pull in your chest sharpens as you head into the lobby of your apartment building, and that’s the only warning you have before you see Akira sitting in the waiting area. You stare at him blankly for a second, unable to place what he’s doing here.

Even from a distance, he looks _tired._ His usually fluffy hair is limp, and between his dark hoodie, the lack of glasses and the dark circles under his eyes he looks rather frightening.

You’re not so easily intimidated, but a few years back you’d have turned around and hid in the parking lot until he left.

Instead you paste on your prettiest media smile and head right for him. “Can I help you?” you ask, doing your best to imply that he’s lost.

It slides right off him. “Are you _done_?” he asks coldly.

You don’t flinch, but you want to. You’re stupidly aware of the gravity dragging you towards him, every light above and around you, every crack in your facade. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” you say.

“Bullshit,” Akira replies, sounding immensely weary of you and your nonsense. “Yusuke told me this is the last day of your exams, so don’t try to get out of this with studying,” he adds.

That Yusuke and Akira talk about confuses you even as it makes you angry. You do your best to ignore that for now, though, turning around and heading to the elevator, relying on that pull to drag him along. He does. Ignoring him in close quarters is the hardest thing you’ve ever done. He doesn’t ignore you back—he’s staring right at you even as you open the door to your flat and step inside, flicking off the switches as has become your habit before flicking them right back on.

“Oh, leave them off,” Akira mutters, and you jab at them one last time with nausea curling in your stomach and lead Akira further inside.

Yusuke is, somewhat conveniently, nowhere to be found. You head to the kitchen to fill a glass with water and hand it to Akira. “Are you alright?” you ask. “You look quite ill.”

Akira shrugs noncommittally. You put pieces together in your head and rearrange them, and pay a little more attention than you can afford towards that ship-sinking gravity inside you. “It’s me, isn’t it,” you conclude. “The bond we have is killing you.”

His eyes widen. “Where did you get _that_ from?” he asks hoarsely.

“It’s quite obvious, now that I think about it.” You look at him again, more carefully, noticing this time the paleness to his skin and the tight line of his mouth. “That is, after all, what abilities do. They’re nothing more than parasites.” You try to smile and fail, completing the thought in your head. _We’re nothing more than parasites. At least, I am._

“No, they’re not _,_ ” Akira snaps. “What the _fuck_? I’m not _dying_ , you asshole.”

You stare at him, trying to memorize him as he looks now and overlaying it with how he looked that night under the streetlights. Definitely a turn for the worse. “Maybe not now,” you inform him. “It takes a few years to destroy you. My mother lived to thirty.”

Akira turns around and walks out of the room.

There’s a moment where you want to follow him, but then think better of it. This is on you, for being tactless enough to tell him he’s dying without so much as a by-your-leave.

While you’re wondering what to do with yourself, he walks back in, pulling a chair out and straddling it to face you. “Alright, explain,” he commands, and you find yourself opening your mouth to speak even before you know what you’re going to say.

“My mother had an ability,” you start carefully. This is the full version of the story you barely managed to tell Yusuke, because you have a feeling Akira will get it out of you sooner or later. He has a way of making you defenseless, and you resent it rather less than you should. “Light and sound. The same ability, incidentally—I still don’t know how that worked for her.” You frown, briefly caught by a memory of her trying to explain the way everything sounded like light to her. You’ve never managed to untangle it, though now that you’re older you know she probably had synesthesia, or something similar. “—Regardless, she was extremely powerful. She was dying long before I was born, but she would’ve lived another decade if not for me. She did her best, you know, but she never really wanted me. She wanted to use what she had, and those weren’t years when people like her could just do that. Maybe if she hadn’t had to worry about someone taking me away, she’d have been able to let her ability out sometimes, and thus lived longer.”

Akira lets you speak without interruption, which is oddly nice. You hate that it’s nice, and you hate how tired you feel after telling that story. Like you’ve put down something you’ve been carrying for years, and can suddenly feel every cramp and spasm you’ve been ignoring.

“So like,” Akira says eventually. “You think I’m dying because your mother died?”

“I _know_ you’re dying,” you correct. “We all are, technically. You’re just dying faster than everyone else, as people with powerful abilities do.” You’re still putting pieces together. “I don’t know why your ability latched onto me, but that might be making matters worse. I’m not as powerful as my mother, but I’m not weak either. If you’ve been carrying the weight of two abilities…” You hate that thought, hate being more of a burden than you already are. “It’s a lot to deal with.”

“The weight of two abilities,” he repeats. “Fucking hell.” Despite his words, there’s little in his tone to indicate the nature of whatever revelation he’s having before you. He still looks tired and angry. “But wait, firstly. I’m not fucking dying, okay? Stop telling me I’m dying.”

“How would you know that?” you argue.

He raises an eyebrow at you. “How did you know your mother was dying?”

“It was _obvious._ And she told me so. Several times.”

“Well, I’m telling you now. I’m _not._ Dying.”

You sneer half-heartedly to cover the relief that inspires in you, though you should know better than to trust that he’s right.

Akira’s tapping his fingers idly against the back of the chair. He has such restless hands. “Died at _thirty_?”

You sigh. “I was nine.”

“Shit,” he mutters. “Shit, that’s—”

“It could’ve been worse,” you say wanly. “I could’ve come home _before_ she died.”

He stares at you, which is fair. “I need a smoke. D’you mind the smell?”

You startle; realizing as you do that you’ve just been leaning against the counter this entire time. “No,” you answer. “And there’s a balcony, though it’s in Yusuke’s room.”

“Nice of you to give him the view,” Akira replies, moving smoothly off the chair and replacing it. He’s incapable of standing still, bouncing on his toes as he waits for you to guide him.

You force yourself to move. “You couldn’t pay me to use it,” you say wryly, and he laughs as he follows you into the hall.

Yusuke has never really asked you to keep out of his room, but you’ve never gone around invading his privacy either. You try not to look around as you step inside, but you notice once again how every wall has paintings and sketches tacked up on it, more than the last time you were here, the unmade bed. You nudge open the balcony door and gesture Akira in ahead of you, closing it when you’re both through.

There’s an easel in one corner and a small cardboard box. You haven’t been here in months or years. You’ve never liked the half-inside half-outside feel of balconies. 

“I had a cold,” Akira says. “Just, by the way. That’s why I look like shit. I’m really not dying.”

You shrug. You feel like a bit of an idiot now, for jumping to conclusions and for telling him so much about you. The reveal was unwarranted, even if he asked. You should know better.

As Akira lights up, you look at the busy street a hundred feet below you, streetlights and car headlights and shop signs, and wonder how something so small and distant can weigh on you so much.

The sky above is cloudy, red, dull. That’s alright—you hate the pinprick light of stars.

Akira exhales slowly. You turn to look at him, dark shadow against a dark sky. “That’s not a very good habit,” you say reprovingly, but you don’t really mean it. You’ve little room to judge other people for ruining themselves.

“Yeah,” Akira says, and makes no attempt to defend himself.

You give up and let him smoke in peace, still staring down with the railing pressing against your forearms. You’re at war with the light every moment of every day, because when you let yourself rest you remember how dangerously seductive light is, how you want the shimmering below to unmake you and swallow you down.

“Scared of heights?” Akira asks, grinding the cigarette against the railing.

You glance back at him, irritated. “Of course not,” you snap. “Are you?”

Akira laughs. “Nope. Not scared of dying, so. No point, right?”

You consider that, turning it around in your head. You’re scared of death, and scared of dying. You know how insidious it is to live with a corpse. But you don’t doubt that Akira knows what he’s talking about, even if you don’t know how he came by that knowledge.

Which in turn leads you to realize you don’t know all that much about him. “Tell me about yourself,” you say.

Akira’s fiddling with the cuffs on his hoodie. There’s absolutely nothing there to fiddle with, but he’s doing a great job nonetheless. “I don’t know how to talk about myself,” he tells you, like this is easy for him to admit. But his face is shuttered. “Ask me a question.”

You take a second to think about it. “Who taught you to smoke?”

“My boss at a part-time job,” Akira replies easily.

“One of _several_ bosses.”

“This one runs a weapons shop.”

“And of course you work there. Where did you live before Tokyo?”

“Inaba. Shitty little town. I hated that place.”

“And you like Tokyo better?”

“So much better.” He’s given up on fiddling with his cuffs and is now cracking the joints on his hands methodically. You wonder, briefly, what it would take to make him _still._

“Favorite thing to eat?”

“Curry. C’mon, aren’t you a detective? You can go tougher on me. I’m a big boy, I promise I can handle it.”

You scowl at him. “Are your parents alive?”

Akira grins at you like you’ve done something right. “Yeah, fuck them.”

“Who do you hate more?”

“Myself,” Akira says, in the same easy rhythm of his previous answers. There’s a tense pause as you try to figure out what to say to that. You hate yourself too, but you rarely admit it. And you don’t want Akira to hate himself. It’s worse when he does it.

Your silence must last too long because Akira swears under his breath. “Can we forget about that?”

You give him a sharp look. “What did you do today?”

He sighs like he’s relieved, like you’ve agreed to let it go. You haven’t. “I woke up, I fed Morgana—my cat, hungry little bastard—showered, cleaned up Leblanc a little, fucked around for a few hours before my first shift of the day, did that shift, came back to change my clothes. I had another job after that, but I skipped it to come here.”

“How many jobs do you have?” you ask, because now Akira’s playing with the lighter, flicking it on and off like he can’t bring himself to stop, and you’re starting to get a sense of what he’s like.

“As many as they’ll let me,” Akira answers. “Shit, didn’t realize that’d bother you.” He puts the lighter back in his pocket and starts playing with his zipper. You resist the urge to reach out and grab his hand. “Hey, can I ask you a question too?”

“It would only be fair, since you’ve answered so many of mine.”

He gives you a strange look, head tilted. “How do you stand it?”

You blink at him.

“The pull,” he clarifies. “This entire time we’ve been out here—and in the kitchen too—it’s been driving me _crazy._ ” His voice is low already, but it drops a little further as he continues, making you shiver. “I want to touch you. I want to touch you so _badly_ and it’s like it doesn’t even do anything to you. Like, you’re just there. Completely unaffected. But you said you could feel it, that day, and—I don’t know. How do you do it?”

That’s a very real question, and you’re not quite sure of the answer. “I ignore it,” you say slowly. “And I know I can’t follow it, so that makes it easier.”

“Just like that?” Akira asks, a tinge of desperation in his voice.

No, not _just._ It hurts like hell. But you suspect it’s hurting Akira worse. For you it’s like being torn apart, or fighting a storm. You can’t imagine how much more painful it is for Akira, who has his own gravity to deal with on top of that. “I’m sorry,” you say, the apology strange in your throat because it’s genuine for once. “That it’s like this.”

“I’m not,” Akira says fiercely.

You don’t know what to say to that. You wish, desperately, that you could give him what he wants simply because he deserves to have it. But you’re just as sure that you’re poison, a bitter flame that will burn Akira’s goodness clean out of the world.

No matter how accustomed you are to the ache of constant wanting, you can’t help wishing he didn’t also have to suffer it for you.

You’re so full of want it’s making you hollow, and he’s standing there like he doesn’t care that you’ll only hurt him. So you do the caring, thanking him for seeing you and making quiet excuses to push him out of the door. You’re slipping in and out of yourself, trying to flee the ease in your body at his closeness and forcing yourself to occupy it by turns.

He’s starting to look angry again, but you can’t let yourself become the monster you know greed makes out of you. You hate it when people are angry at you, but you’re used to how contrary you can be. Maybe it’s time Akira learnt that you’re not worth it.

He’ll live, anyway. 

It’s late and you can’t sleep. You sit on the floor of your room, backed between the dresser and the door, wide awake and bleakly certain that _you_ won’t live.

How much longer can you starve yourself? Hopefully long enough that your prey comes to his senses and runs, runs so far that no gravity can tie you to each other even if it means leaving you to die of hunger.

Yusuke doesn’t return all night, and you crawl into bed when the room starts to lighten and try to catch a little sleep before you have to face the day.

You end up sleeping in until noon, and when you wake up you’re amused by the melodrama of your thoughts from the previous night—early this morning, anyway. 

Yusuke’s trying to make lunch when you go out, and you hastily put an end to that foolishness and call a fast-food shop before you’re required to call the fire department. While you’re waiting, Yusuke says, “Did Akira come over last night?”

You look up sharply from your phone, where you were scrolling through bad news. “He did.”

“Good,” Yusuke nods. “I was worried about you.” And then he takes a close look at you, like he can unearth everything you’re not telling him with a glance. “Did you sleep last night?”

“Oh, leave me alone,” you snap rudely. You know how pathetic you are, and you hate that he says he _was_ worried about you like it isn’t clear on his face still. But you hate even more that you keep picking at his harmless errors and offering nothing in return, so you make an attempt, grudgingly. “He stayed for a while, though not that long. I couldn’t sleep afterwards.” You swallow, considering your next words. “Where were you last night?”

“Oh, I stayed at Ann’s place,” Yusuke says easily. “I wanted to try a new technique out, but I’m not well-versed in it. And she said I could come over.”

You tilt your head at him, smiling despite yourself. “You really like painting her, don’t you?”

“It’s not a question of what I _like,_ ” Yusuke huffs. “It’s what I’m compelled to do by my brush.”

“Really?” you say. “You don’t think she’s pretty?”

“She’s _much more_ than pretty,” Yusuke says, scandalized, and launches into an elaborate description of Ann that you tune out entirely to focus on the passion in his voice.

The bell rings a few minutes later, effectively distracting Yusuke with the prospect of food. You find yourself mulling over his presence in your life again as you eat, trying to pick apart whatever you feel for him—friendship, unfamiliar and bright in itself, and the desire for more that nearly defines you, both threaded through with an urge to protect him from the world for as long as you can, knowing how futile a prospect it is and wanting to try anyway.

You’re not stupid enough to think he’s into you, and though it would be painfully easy to coerce him into giving you what you want (you’ve been paying for everything these past few months, and Yusuke has thanked you once but offered little else) the thought of doing that turns your stomach.

Which leaves you, again, trapped in wanting. 

You finish eating and grab your laptop from your room, intending to watch a documentary—but you get distracted halfway through because Yusuke’s using the other couch in the room to sketch on, and you want to look at him rather more than you want to look at a screen.

There’s a question on the tip of your tongue—several, really—but you hold them all in and watch him for a long time.

Your good sense counsels you to leave Leblanc alone although your feet take you there a few days later because you’re so _bored_ of working alone and Yusuke’s taken himself to the cold, windy park to do some nature studies.

Akira isn’t there when you show up, so you order a coffee from the proprietor (he gives you a quietly suspicious look, but you simply stare blankly back like you don’t know the root of his animosity) and set up in a corner of the shop, dedicating yourself to working until Akira returns or your hunger catches up with you.

It’s Akira that arrives first, just as you finish a report and wonder whether to get started on holiday homework or do another case file. “I thought I’d find you here,” Akira grins.

“Hello,” you reply. “Took you long enough.”

“Text ahead next time,” Akira advises you.

“If you’re back, man the shop. I’m gonna go buy cigarettes,” Sakura-san calls from behind the counter.

Akira pulls a box out of his jacket and tosses it to Sakura. “I’m headed back out, actually.”

“Brat,” Sakura grumbles, but he sounds rather affectionate. It makes your stomach twinge.

You shut your laptop and put it back in your briefcase, following Akira out of the shop. The ache of being near him is making you sick, but it’s a familiar kind of sickness. Like standing barefoot on the beach, feeling the waves pull sand out from under your feet. You almost don’t mind.

“Where are you taking me?” you ask, but the answer matters less when you’re with him. He radiates safety, like if someone kicked you both out it’d be something to laugh about instead of something that’d make you afraid to leave your room.

Akira half-shrugs. “There’s this nice pancake place downtown.”

“I’ve probably been there,” you say. Your unease settles back in all at once. You know the one, and you haven’t been back since you were outed. You’re pretty sure they won’t have a problem, but _pretty sure_ isn’t good enough. Trusting Akira isn’t enough. You’re not good at trust. “Ginza West?”

“That’s the one,” Akira grins.

He talks idly at you the entire way there, effectively distracting you from the bright sunlight and throngs of people, from your worry. Strange how light doesn’t weigh as much with him near. Stranger still the soft sidelong glances he gives you, like you’re too bright to see clearly.

“I’m not—glowing, am I?” you ask, the fourth time he fails to look away before you catch him.

Akira shakes his head. “There’s something else about you. Can’t put my finger on it.”

“Let me know when you do,” you snort, and privately hope he’s right about your lack of halo.

The pancakes are delicious, and your fears about being kicked out come to naught. It’s little comfort; you shouldn’t trust things just yet. But you pay for both you and him without giving him a chance, and he gives you yet another look, slightly different from the rest.

“What,” you say, irritated.

“You’ve never asked Yusuke for rent, have you?”

“Why would I?” you say blankly. “I know he doesn’t have money, and it’s not like _I_ pay any rent.”

“Oh, but I bet he drives up your electricity bill.”

“To _normal levels._ ”

“Methinks the prince doth protest too much,” Akira says, and you shove him in a fit of juvenile distaste for his stupid ability to see through your shit. “Hey, mean!”

You hiss at him. He laughs out loud, and you roll your eyes for lack of anything else to do. “He,” you start carefully. “He gave me a painting once.”

“A painting,” Akira repeats, going still and alert.

“Of a firefly,” you continue. “I still have it.” You stare at his shoes. “What more can I ask for?”

Akira doesn’t reply, but it’s a rhetorical question; you can answer it in your head, and the voice is sarcastic. But you dislike that voice—it’s never much use, and you _like_ Yusuke. You don’t want to be mean about him even in your head. Maybe that makes you the kind of sap that would never survive in your father’s line of work, but you’re _not_ in that line of work anymore. 

Akira suggests going to the park a few minutes later, and your shoulders must slump rather obviously because he quickly amends it to, “Your place?”

“Don’t you have a shift somewhere or the other?” you ask him sourly.

He grins at you. “No. Watch this.” He digs his phone out of his pocket (extracting along with it a set of tangled earphones, lockpicks, and a plastic Featherman toy no taller than your little finger that you instantly crave) and makes five calls to three people. “There, I’m yours for the rest of the day.”

“I’m only keeping you because gifts don’t come with receipts,” you snipe.

Akira smiles winningly at you. “You’re keeping me because you find my company charming,” he corrects, and there’s something achingly familiar about the way he wears arrogance, like it’s foil between him and the world; too thin for real protection, and therefore more an effort at deflection.

“I tolerate you,” you offer generously, and his smile stretches wider.

The trains are rather empty because it’s the middle of the day, giving Akira enough room to pace around and peer out of every window, reorganize the entire collection of things he keeps in his pockets (which, along with the aforementioned, includes: a deck of tarot cards, phone charger, lighter, spare triple A batteries, a straw, a tube of antiseptic cream, chewing gum, a different flavor of chewing gum, a lump of melted plastic, his wallet, an unmarked pill bottle, four pens, two hairbands—and that’s just his jacket), and discover that you like Featherman. You get the toy in return for admitting it, like Akira’s trying to Pavlov you for good behavior.

“I got it for a friend, but I can get her another,” Akira informs you earnestly.

“I’m not _six years old,_ ” you grumble, but it’s entirely wasted.

You have to admit it’s nice to receive something like this, impulsive and wholly without strings. The last thing you ever received as a gift was a pair of gloves from your mother. You slip the toy into the pocket of your own jacket, and when you look up again Akira’s fucking around on his phone. You wonder how you ever thought him calm or steady.

Nevertheless he keeps a careful foot of distance between you all the way up to your apartment, always walking behind you so he doesn’t step into your space. The care in it turns your stomach, knowing how much it costs him. And all your excuses feel rather fragile when you’re watching the tight line of his lips like he’s struggling not to jump you in the elevator.

You gesture him ahead of you into your flat, and he squares his shoulders before walking in like this is a battle. You roll your eyes and follow him in, shutting the door behind you and reaching for the lights.

“Keep them off,” Akira says. “I’m good with this.”

You stare at him. “Don’t be a hero. I don’t want you tripping over a paintbrush because you didn’t see it.”

Akira shrugs. “I can see just fine.”

“Your eyesight is _not_ that good,” you snort. You did some light research into the human eye after that dreadful conversation with Yusuke.

“Not generally,” Akira agrees. “Things are just clearer around you.”

“Are you _sure_ I’m not glowing?” you ask, holding up your hand and trying to see if there’s any obvious light emanating from it.

“You’re not, don’t worry. I just mean like...everything’s sharper around you. Like seeing the world in HD. It’s not that my eyesight’s bad, you know it’s not. It’s just _better_ around you.”

You think about how you don’t feel so burdened around him. “That makes sense,” you say, even though it really, _really_ doesn’t, and deposit him on the couch so you can put your briefcase and jacket away.

Rather predictably, he refuses to stay put, and is standing in the door to your bedroom with his arms folded over his chest when you turn around. “Messier than I thought it would be,” he comments.

You scan the room quickly. Nothing’s out of place; the bed is made, the curtains are drawn, the bedside table doesn’t even have a charger plugged in. “What’re you talking about.”

Akira points at the glass of water on your desk. You resist the urge to throw it at his face and see how he likes _that._ Instead you restrain yourself, clench and unclench your gloved hands, and say, “Why don’t you sit down.”

You mean in the living room. He throws himself onto your bed. “Won’t you join me?” he asks, wide-eyed and innocent.

“I hate you,” you mumble, and sit down gingerly on the bed. Akira lies down, lacing his fingers over his stomach and looking up at you like he’s waiting for something. You’ve no idea what it is, but you’re distracted by his curling hair, dark against your white pillows. You want to preserve the sight and unfortunately have nowhere close to Yusuke’s talent to capture it. If you could bend that possessive streak in you long enough to ask him, perhaps—but you can’t. You’re not willing to share this.

“What’s that A on your jacket for?” he asks you. You’re almost amused by how quickly the silence became unbearable for him. You could’ve let it stretch for hours.

“I thought I was the one asking the questions,” you return.

Akira rolls his eyes. “Ace detective, interrogation fetish, blah blah blah. Tell me or don’t.”

“Akira,” you say.

“Yes?”

“Stands for Akira.”

He groans. “It stands for your name, doesn’t it.”

You shrug. “Could also stand for _ace._ ”

“And does it?”

“...No.”

Akira looks smug. “What’s your favorite thing to eat—other than pancakes?”

“Crepes,” you admit.

He groans again. “You’re as bad as Ann. Maybe I should pit the two of you against each other sometimes, see who can eat more sweet things in an hour.” He digs a coin out of the pocket of his jeans as he talks, flipping it one-handed and catching it out of the air. The meagre light in your bedroom glints off the edges.

You don’t want to see it, though, and you don’t want to tell him to stop. So you move to lie down, on your stomach and propped up on your elbows like you’re reading a book. Except the book is Akira, and he’s looking at the ceiling. “How do you know Ann?” you ask.

“Ex-girlfriend,” Akira replies, a non-answer. His hand is now held loosely above his chest, the coin dancing between his fingers like a magic trick.

“And you still talk to her?” Your grasp of dating etiquette comes from trailers for romcoms that play before documentaries, but you’re pretty sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen.

Akira just shrugs. “I talk to all my exes. Except the ones that hate me.”

“How many of them hate you?”

“Classified information,” Akira replies. “Your turn to ask the questions.”

You consider him carefully, and then reach out and pluck off his glasses without touching his face. His eyes slide shut, and then blink open again as you set the glasses onto the table next to you. “Who was the Featherman toy for?”

“Uh,” Akira says. “You know Boss—Sojiro Sakura? Yeah, his daughter. Adopted daughter.”

You think about this. “Is she your ex-girlfriend too?”

“No. I didn’t want to break up with her, so I didn’t ask her out.”

“Charming logic,” you murmur.

“I’m a real star,” Akira laughs. “I break up with everyone, sooner or later, so I don’t take chances on the people I like.” He turns slightly to look at you. “Ann broke up with me, by the way.”

“Smart girl,” you suggest.

Akira turns his head further, hungry eyes lingering on the inches between you and him. The coin falls to the bed, forgotten. “Not as smart as you.” It’s a ringing clear _keep your distance,_ though he wants nothing less, and as for you—

The desire to touch him is back, stronger than ever. You can’t even imagine what you’d start with, and you force yourself not to think about it at all lest your control give out. Funny how his list of reasons to stay away only make it harder for you to do that—you want to convince him otherwise. You’ve never wanted anything like it before.

You take a deep breath. “What’s your major in college?”

“Nothing. I dropped out.” He bites his lip, like he’s trying to think of what to say and isn’t sure how to start. Picks up the coin again, throwing it a few inches only to catch it again. “School is—was, hard for me. Especially after I came to Tokyo, what with a newfound ability and everything, I just dropped out. Worked with Sojiro and a handful of other people for like, a year, and then I went back and graduated. Not with good marks, mind you. I tried college, but I dropped out within a week, so now I’m back to part-timing.” He snorts. “Pretty pathetic, right?”

You don’t think it’s pathetic. You can’t wrap your head around his self-loathing, but there’s little pitiable to you about the kind of life he leads. It requires more courage than you have to take every day as it comes, without schedules and routines and careful rituals of control that are all attempts to impose meaning onto chaos.

Or maybe you _can_ understand why he hates himself. You understand high standards, and dissatisfaction. “We’re not so different,” you say gently. “You’re just freer than me.”

Akira laughs harshly. “Freedom is overrated.”

“So is captivity,” you reply easily. “You must pick your battles.”

“Let me guess, you picked all of them.”

“You overestimate me. I’m as pathetic as you are, and much more cowardly.”

Akira makes a disbelieving noise. His shoulders are tense, and this time when he catches the coin out of the air he doesn’t throw it again, just holds it in a white-knuckled fist. There are scars on the backs of his hands like he throws punches at glass. “What’re _you_ afraid of?”

You try to find specifics and fail. _Everything._ “Classified information. What’re _you_ afraid of?”

He stares at you, angry and hiding it. “Usual shit,” he says indifferently. “Being alone. Needles. Breaking something valuable. Tell me one thing you’re scared of, or I’m leaving.”

Something’s set him off for real. You don’t know what it is, but you don’t want him to leave when he’s like this, wandering around Tokyo like an open wound. “Going outside,” you say, barely pausing to test the honesty of your words. “My father. Being poor.”

“Oh, great.” Akira’s flipping the damned coin again. You hope that means he feels a little better. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Would it be cheating to touch his face with your gloved hands? That can’t possibly count, right? But you’re not feeling cruel tonight—you just don’t know how to be careful with him.

“I think,” Akira continues, while you’re still trying to figure that out. “That if you do something you’re scared of, it no longer counts.”

 _Count._ Is he in your head?

“So if you go outside, you can’t put that on your list,” he finishes.

You shake your head, unconvinced by his argument. “And _why_ do your exes hate you?”

“I broke their heart,” Akira says easily, and then pauses. “Touché.” His eyes are twinkling. “Look.” He drops the coin and holds his arm out, tugging the sleeve back for you to see.

It’s a tattoo, a winged shape wrapped around his forearm. You want to touch it, and you don’t. 

“Lovely,” you say. “Did it work?”

Akira laughs ruefully. “‘Course not. But I said that to make _you_ feel better, not me.”

The admission shakes something loose inside you, an anger you didn’t realize existed. “I don’t want platitudes.”

“It’s not—”

“It is if you don’t believe it.”

Akira looks stunned for a brief second, and then he’s moving so fast you shift back without thinking of it to avoid interrupting his momentum. “This is all backwards,” he says hurriedly. “Sorry, but I have to go. Shit. _Shit._ ”

And then he’s _gone_ before you can say a word, down a flight of stairs and turning the next by the time you follow him out.

You half-expect him to return, like last time, but he doesn't. The sudden emptiness is making your heart lurch; you don't know where you fucked up, or how to make it better.

Whether it's even your problem to solve, though that's never stopped you in the past.

You go into the kitchen and run the coffee machine while you wait for Yusuke to return, rewinding the tape in your head. _This is all backwards,_ and _I don’t know how to talk about myself,_ and _I said that to make you feel better._ Fragile arrogance, restless hands, a bitter deprecation you recognize all too well.

The Featherman toy is still in your pocket. You slip that and the coin he was playing with into the drawer next to your bed and try not to think about what you’re doing.

When Yusuke returns, you say, “Can I come along the next time you see Ann?” She’s Akira’s friend, and if anyone would have answers it’d be her.

You highly doubt she has answers, but it’s as good a lead as any. It’s that or Sakura’s daughter, and your link to _her_ is too tenuous to pursue outside an official investigation. You’re treating this like a case, because if you think too long about what it means you’re going to get your own case of cold feet. And you don’t have time for that right now.

“Of course,” Yusuke says, and then frowns. “Did something happen?”

“I’m just curious about the woman who captured your imagination,” you lie easily, and then hate yourself for lying to your friends.

Was there ever a time when you weren’t a liar? You’ve been trying to tell Akira the truth, but you don’t know if you succeeded. That alone is a good reason to let him go. Maybe he just found himself seeing through your lies and didn’t expect to be the one lied to. 

A likely story.

“I’m seeing her again on Friday,” Yusuke says, and you pull your phone out to put that into your calendar.

You’re handed another case at the department, at long last. They’ve been drying up lately, and you suspect you know why. You’ve tried to look the truth in the eye, and you know they’re freezing you out. Their fucking loss.

But it’s _your_ loss too—you love your job. The SIU is the department with the least connection to the police, which is a necessity for someone like you. Cops will always point at you as a suspect, especially now that they know what you are.

Your colleagues at the SIU are no different, and without Sae at your side you’re all by yourself on every crime scene. Dead bodies don’t bother you and haven’t in years—you’ve got a strong constitution like that. But the case you’re assigned is a clear-cut one of violence by an ability user, and you know what they’re trying to pin you into doing. _Accuse someone like you, prove you’re on our side._

It’s frustrating—a crime scene should be just that. Dead bodies needn’t be dragged into petty bigoted internecine politics. 

A crime scene is _never_ just that.

You don’t drag your heels on the case no matter how badly you want to. You produce your findings to the head of the department in person, and he finally deigns to look at you. All you can think of is how this guy is in your father’s pocket, and he should be in yours as well. You’ve done _so much_ for him. 

You’re not as above internecine politics as you’d like to pretend you are.

“There have been rumors about you,” he says.

You stare at the edge of the desk so hard you think light sparks off of it, and then look away sharply. “There have always been rumors about me.”

This would be such a boring conversation—you’re a fucking prodigy detective, you’ve been making headlines since you were seventeen—if it weren’t for the dread crawling down your spine like wasps.

“That you used your ability for your previous solves.”

The wasps are moving faster. It’s a struggle not to laugh. It’d probably come out more crazy than you can afford. “Do you know what my ability is?” you sneer. “It’s light. Do you think I’ve been shining my way through crime scenes for six years?”

 _Six fucking years,_ and they still dare treat you like this. 

“The rest of the department doesn’t see it like that,” the director says. 

Of course they don’t—they probably don’t think you’re a criminal, but it doesn’t _matter_ to them whether you are. They’re not going to defend you at the cost of their own careers. You can hardly blame them for running the numbers to that answer. You can’t be sure you wouldn’t do the same.

You wish you had cold water to run over your palms—you can’t feel anything except a ringing numbness. The only thing in your palms is dark leather, though. It’ll have to be enough.

“If you’re going to let me go,” you say, low-voiced. “You should tell me now.”

“We wouldn’t fire you,” the director says, like he’s been waiting for you to admit you know what he’s doing. “But it would be good if you…left. Quietly.”

You don’t close your eyes. You don’t clench your fists. You don’t even straighten up. Nothing matters, because you’ll never be enough to rise above what you’re hemmed into being. You should’ve known better than to try. You can’t remember why you ever let yourself forget.

The image of slate-grey eyes flashes through your mind. You dismiss it with a blink. “I still have two open cases,” you point out, past your dry throat. “I want to wrap them up first.”

“Alright,” the director says, relieved. “It’s nice that you’re being so understanding about this.”

 _Nice,_ you think blankly. This is what you understand: you have few options; blackmail via your father, blackmail via pointing out everything you’ve done for this department. What do you even hope to achieve by staying? You’ll be pushed out sooner or later—how long until the people rifling through your desk get more brazen with their activities? Who in this department is going to look out for _you_ , except for Sae, who has a hard enough time looking out for herself?

The loss drenches through you bit by aching bit as you make the walk back to your office. You’d like to spend the rest of the day working, but you can’t think about anything.

That’s a lie—you’re thinking so fast it’s blurring into static. You’re staring at the dustbin by your desk and thinking about how it hasn’t been emptied since the last time you were here. You’re thinking about every case you’ve solved and how you’ve almost always done them by yourself, because at first you were the charity case the department took on at a powerful man’s request and then you were simply far too yourself to get along with anyone else.

You know you can be an asshole. You can’t help wondering if you should’ve tried to be less of one before now, if that would mean this department would reach out to you when you need them—or whether their rejection would just hurt more because you’d see them as people.

By now you’re shaking too hard to think, so you go back home and curl up under the bed to gasp dry into your pillow and think about everything you’ll miss about your draughty corner office, the coffee stains on the desk and the nights you’ve slept there because you were seventeen and eighteen and too scared to come home to an empty flat.

Maybe you brought this upon yourself. You try to remember the person you are now, the one that’s different from what you were, and largely fail. You’re still a piece of shit.

This time you _do_ drag your heels on your cases. No one’s peering over your shoulder making sure you’re doing your work anymore. You don’t even know if Sae will be prosecuting this—you haven’t spoken to her since that last conversation at the department. 

Yusuke invites you to see his painting in action, but neglects to mention that Ann isn’t the _only_ person he’s meeting. You’re vibrating with nerves the entire time you commute to a cafe you’ve never been to before. You can’t expect Yusuke to know that new places are hell for you now since you’ve never _told him,_ but you resent it anyway. You’re jumpy between the weight of the light and making sure Yusuke doesn’t get lost in traffic. The curious looks the cashier is slanting you crawl between your shirtsleeves and skin like insects. 

The first person Yusuke waves to is a guy with spiky blond hair who looks like he could be a gym trainer. The next person is a young woman who you recognize as the recent inheritor of Okumura Foods. She recognizes you in turn, and you chat briefly about how her company’s doing before the gym trainer wannabe—Ryuji—pokes his head in and asks if you’re the guy Yusuke’s been living with.

“How do you know these people?” you hiss at Yusuke.

Yusuke gives him a surprised look. “They’re Ann and Akira’s friends,” he says. “Akira will be here too. I thought you’d like it.”

That’s rather nice, even if you doubt Akira wants to see you. You doubt anyone should. “Did you tell him I was coming?”

“I forgot,” Yusuke mumbles, going slightly pink, and you settle back, trying to convince yourself that it’s okay for you to be here if Akira’s allowed to be, but he isn’t here and it isn’t sticking to your brain. You wish you could excuse yourself and go throw up, and you’re not even the kind of person that throws up due to nerves.

Makoto Niijima shows up next, a razor-sharp reminder of what you lost with her sister. You do your best to focus on the Niijima in front of you, and while you’re both trying to explain how you know each other to the rest of the group, your chest hurts like someone’s yanked on a bell pull. You look up in time to see Akira step in with a slender redhead in tow.

He looks around, catches sight of you, and then shoves the girl in ahead of him and _runs away._

You see him sprint away through the glass front of the cafe, but you don’t bother going after him. The ache goes slack and distant again, pulsing like a second heart.

The girl, for her part, freezes right where Akira left her, looking around the cafe blankly until Ann gets up to go retrieve her. You can hear her asking “...his problem?” as they return to the table. Then she makes eye contact with you, squeaks, and ducks behind Ann entirely.

You’re starting to feel miserable, like a misplaced circus exhibit. You don’t know why you were expecting Akira to want to see you, but the clear knowledge that he doesn’t lodges in your stomach like a rusty blade. The girl’s fear of you is not helping—you’ve no idea what she’s heard about you on the news, or from Akira. 

Ann pats her arm from behind. “Futaba-chan, this is Akechi-kun—Yusuke’s roommate?”

Futaba stumbles her way through a “nice to meet you”, but makes no effort to step away from Ann. 

Makoto sighs. “Sorry, Futaba’s a little shy.”

It’s rather more likely that you’re a monster to her, but you can’t even blame her for that. “That’s fine,” you say, smiling briefly and with obscene effort. You’ve too much pride to not pretend everything is alright. She’s wearing a Featherman t-shirt under the enormous jacket, and you wait until she sits down to say, “Did you watch the Feathers of Flame movie?”

Futaba blinks at you, looks down at her shirt briefly. “Uh, obviously,” she says. “I was at the _premiere_.” She leans forward. “It was really cool, right?! I kept waiting for them to bring Horned Owl in, ‘cause, y’know, it's a movie and they have to bring in all their characters for the cash grab, but I didn’t expect it to be like that!” She pauses, and then slumps back down in her seat. “Was gonna go see it again with Akira today, till he _ditched_ me.”

“Yeah, what was up with that?” Ryuji asks. “Where’d he go?”

“I dunno,” Futaba huffs. “He was just like _oh, they’re all over there, but I gotta go seeyalater,_ and then…” She flicks her hand, making a popping sound as she does. “Gone.”

“Maybe he just didn’t want to see Feathers of Flame for a fourth time?” Ann suggests lightly. Futaba gasps in outrage.

You’re suddenly, oddly charmed that Akira’s plans for the day involved going to see a Featherman movie more times than even you could stand. “I think he was a bit surprised to see me,” you suggest quietly.

“Does he even know you?” Ryuji asks. “No offense, dude, but we don’t really hang out with celebrities.” Ann and Haru turn to stare at him. He huffs. “ _TV_ celebrities are different.”

“Anyway, we’ve met before. And Akira never forgets a face,” Ann says firmly. “Funny, he didn’t really have a problem with you _last_ time.”

“When did you meet Akira?” Makoto asks, turning curiously to you.

“Your sister recommended Leblanc to me,” you say, and carefully don’t think about dark bathrooms and eleventh floor balconies and your bedroom. Instead you think about how you’ll never get another friendly recommendation from Sae ever again.

“Was that the first time?” Ann says vaguely. “It kinda felt like you knew each other.”

You hate all of these people. “I don’t quite recall,” you say faintly.

Yusuke’s stomach saves you by grumbling loudly. You don’t know what _for_ —he ate two pancakes this morning, for heaven’s sake, and it’s hardly three pm—but you’re grateful nonetheless.

Makoto slides into the position of leader that you somehow suspect Akira usually occupies, taking orders from everyone around the table and delivering them precisely to the server. You get a light savory pie and listen to the rest of the orders with horror that you keep to yourself.

The conversation slides around various topics. There’s a brief argument about video games between Ryuji and Futaba that goes unsettled, waiting for Akira’s input, and then an interlude in which Ann and Makoto swap plates (a process made difficult by being on opposite ends) so they can both have some variety. You pick at your pie with little appetite and respond when a question floats over to you, otherwise relegating yourself to absorbing information.

“ _Anyway,_ I’m gonna need an escort mission to the movies now that Akira abandoned me,” Futaba says, digging into her mac and cheese. “Any volunteers?”

You think about offering, since you have nothing better to do with your time for the next week anyway, but you’d rather catch up on reading.

“Uhh, _no_ takers?” Futaba asks.

Makoto sighs. “Ryuji will go with you.”

“Hey,” Ryuji protests. “Just because I’m your boyfriend doesn’t mean you can—”

“He’ll even buy you popcorn,” Makoto adds, smiling with marked villainy. 

“We’ve gotta get popcorn,” Futaba says firmly. “Akira _always_ buys me popcorn.”

Your mind flashes to the meal you paid for.

“I wonder if he’s okay,” Ann says worriedly, slicing into her stack of waffles. “He’s been doing better lately, but he was doing better the last time too, and then—” she snaps her mouth shut and frowns.

“Better than what?” Yusuke asks.

“Nothing,” Ann says quickly.

“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Makoto adds.

Privately you think that’s a rather rich statement to be making about a college drop-out with self-esteem issues and a tendency to run away from his problems, but you don’t say that. There’s no statement you can reasonably make about Akira without drawing undue attention to the tangle of your relationship. Instead you say, “I believe that, but I must admit I’m curious where he found such an unlikely friend group.”

The tension deflates, and you get each of their stories in turn. That Akira helped Ryuji get back on the track team after an abusive teacher ruined his chances at going pro, that Akira helped Ann come to terms with the aftermath of a friend’s attempted suicide, that he helped Makoto realize that her passion lay in law enforcement, that he helped Futaba overcome her social anxiety and step out of the house after her mother died—

You’re starting to realize that Akira’s the kind of person for whom following strangers into bathrooms ends _well_ far more often than it ends badly, but you’re also getting rather sick of the word _help,_ or the idea that up until recently you were one of Akira’s many charity cases.

 _This is all backwards._ “He sounds like a wonderful friend,” you say vaguely. You feel sick and heavy.

Ann giggles. “Yeah, he is. You know we used to date? Before I realized I still had feelings for Shiho, anyway. Akira’s amazing, though, he’s so helpful. And he gives great he—uh, advice.”

 _Those aren’t personality traits,_ some snide voice in your head remarks.

You ignore the voice and allow the conversation to flow back to other topics, like Ann’s new modelling gig and an argument over how old is too old to wear light-up shoes. Futaba does not seem to want to age out of them and Haru concurs.

Ryuji is against them on the grounds that they’re annoying to run in and Makoto believes they’re for children; Ann refuses to have an opinion, and Yusuke is sketching busily on a paper napkin. Which means it falls to you to break the stalemate. Light-up shoes are so far outside the realm of what you consider acceptable footwear that you’ve never once in twenty-three years considered them, but you throw your lot in with Futaba. Pretending to have an opinion on things you couldn’t care less about is something of a specialty of yours, in any case.

By the time you’ve all paid and are getting up to leave, the order of events has shuffled around and Ryuji has wiggled out of going with Futaba to watch Feathers of Flame. You offer to walk her home and she brightens despite barely knowing you.

“I thought you wanted to watch me paint,” Yusuke says. 

He sounds injured, and you feel a sharp stab of guilt. “Maybe some other time. I’d feel bad letting Futaba-chan walk home by herself.” That, and you’re honestly too exhausted to make nice with people for another few hours. You’ll reach home quicker after you drop Futaba off.

“I’d _prooobably_ be fine?” Futaba mumbles.

“I want some coffee, anyway,” you say over her.

“So like, how’d you get into Featherman?” Futaba asks, as you set off towards the station. “No ‘fence, but you kinda don’t seem like the cartoon type.”

“None taken,” you smile with moderate effort, trying to remember enough of your childhood to formulate an answer. “I didn’t have a lot of friends,” you say carefully. “And Featherman runs on TV from five pm to seven pm—I’d watch it after school, when everyone else was over at their friends’ homes.”

Futaba grins. “I didn’t have a lot of friends either,” she says freely. “I think Akira was my first friend in like, five years, when he moved in.”

You don’t want to talk about Akira right now, partly because you’re not quite sure if you can handle getting angry for him a second time in a few hours. With little prompting, though, Futaba starts talking about computer parts and the robot she’s building, and you let that conversation carry you all the way to Leblanc. You learn she’s a prodigy, a genius with electronics and code, that Sojiro took her in after her mother died much like he took in Akira a few years later.

It reminds you of one of your contacts, and you briefly entertain the notion that she’s the high schooler who’s dug up dirt for you on past cases. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so unlikely.

The pull goes taut as she pushes open the door, and this time you’re paying enough attention to connect the moment Akira looks up with the pain kicking up a notch. Something to do with whether you’re both looking at each other, you think, something else to do with proximity. You wish you could convince him to experiment with you.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you,” Akira says dumbly.

“I wasn’t gonna get lost just ‘cause you abandoned me,” Futaba protests. “I’m not _that_ incompetent. Besides, Akechi over here offered to walk me home.”

“Nice of him,” Akira says, puppet-like. 

He looks rather wretched, and you feel sorry for him. “It was no trouble,” you say, smiling slightly. “I wanted to grab some coffee, but something came up at work, so I’ll take my leave right away.”

“Oh, yeah,” Akira says. “Work stuff. Always coming up, isn’t it?”

You wish you had a handy mug of something to throw at his face.

“A detective is never off the job,” you lie smoothly, and make your exit. The pull goes slack as you’re turning around the corner.

Despite your best attempts at reigning it in, though, your worries spin out of control over the next few weeks. It’s all the free time after your exams—too much room to think, not enough things to do until you’re dead with exhaustion. You no longer have work from the department to keep you occupied, but at least you’re still able to keep an eye on the new cases coming into the department. Far too many involve ability users, enough that you wish desperately could be around to make sure they were seen through fairly. Every new one you see on the news makes you sick, and you can’t wrangle your way onto working on one of them. 

Which leaves you with nothing but time to wonder why Akira’s ignoring you.

Maybe he’s just sick of you, or woke up to the fact that you’ve got nothing to offer him. What can you give him that he can’t find much more easily with another person? You’re hardly stellar in bed—you dislike being naked, and you dislike submitting to other people’s touch, and you don’t trust yourself enough to let them submit to you. You get attached too easily, checking your phone every hour despite knowing he isn’t talking to you anymore. You already feel too much for him even though you’ve met him all of five times.

You want to follow the ache in your stomach and figure out what went wrong. You’ve never had the ability to leave well enough alone—it’s why you even bothered calling your father after your mother died, even though she warned you he’d do nothing for you.

And then you find yourself wishing she was here to tell you what to do, and call up one of your professors in a fit of spite and ask for a meeting to see if she needs any work done over the holidays. You only dare contact her because you know for a fact she’s got an ability—you feel extremely guilty every time you run the name of someone you know through your saved version of the now-defunct website that outed them, but you don’t stop doing it. You’re terrified, and this helps a little—you’ll take anything you can get.

Yumiko Fuyuki teaches Literary Theory, a class you took to round out your coursework last year and ended up liking enough to stay on. Her ability makes things grow. You doubt you’ll ever see it in action, but something unwinds in your stomach as you sit down opposite her in an office full of plants.

“Goro Akechi, right?” she asks. She has bright green eyes behind her glasses, and a stern but fair expression. “How can I help you?”

Your ability feels like it’s strangling you, all that light reflecting off leaves. “I was wondering—hoping, really—that you’d have a teaching assistantship position open. I know it’s quite late in the year to ask, but…”

Fuyuki brightens. “I didn’t know you were that interested in Literary Theory,” she says. “You’re a criminology major now, aren’t you?”

“For all the good it does me, yes,” you say blandly. “I have a passing interest in philosophy, but this seems rather more pertinent.” God, you’re sick of the way you talk. 

“As it turns out, I lost a couple of assistants recently,” Fuyuki says. There’s no inflection in her tone. “I’m assuming my ability won’t be a problem for you.”

You shake your head. “I have one myself.”

“So it’s no coincidence that you ended up here,” Fuyuki says amiably. “Why an assistantship position at all, though? You must be quite used to leading the charge, so to speak. I can’t imagine academia holds much for you.”

You wonder if she’s trying to tell you that you don’t belong here. You don’t think she’s wrong. But you paste on a smile like there’s a camera nearby and say, “I enjoyed your class when I took it, and I find myself recently in need of work. My motives are nothing sinister, I assure you.”

It costs more to tell the truth than to lie. Fuyuki stares at you over her glasses. “Forgive me,” she says, a long pause later. “Our kind get enough suspicion already. You can have the position, but you’ll have to do quite a lot of homework to correct some of these papers. There’s usually a learning curve, but not so close to the third semester.”

“That’s alright,” you say, relieved. “I can learn as I go, and I have the time now to study. When can I start?”

She pulls a thumb drive out of her drawer. “With this week’s nonsense from the junior class.”

At least correcting papers and reading other papers keeps you distracted from the lack of challenging casework. Your own courseload is light at the moment, and perhaps for anyone else that combined with your newfound unemployment status would constitute a vacation. You’re incapable of having one of those, though, so you do your work and try not to think about how you still haven’t told Yusuke you lost your job. You immerse yourself in art history documentaries when you’re not working and spend your late nights reading everything you can about people with abilities.

The additional work means you sleep a little better, but only marginally. Most of the time when your capacity for work runs out you lie in the dark and shudder under the weight of light, the way it never fades at all these days. Maybe it’s something else, something like dying. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep—just because you sleep better when you do doesn’t mean you sleep _more._ The things you want and don’t dare name haunt every shadow you turn to in order to escape the glow.

There’s more to people with abilities than you knew—more than you’ve cared to find out before this. There are clubs and communities for them—even your college has one. You’d assumed it was just the rare faculty member and student.

And the pull you’re feeling isn’t an unknown phenomenon either, though it’s rare. Sometimes between people who have similar abilities, or with people whose abilities are neat inverses of each other. There’s not a lot you can find on the topic, and the descriptions of it vary, but it’s the same thing in the end; an indefinable draw towards another person, something that won’t leave them alone until its culmination.

For some it culminates in sex, for others in friendship. You don’t want to think about this, but you can’t leave it alone either. 

You don’t know when this bond is going to stop haunting you and Akira. Or rather: you suspect you _do_ know, and the answer is terrifying.

Terrifying enough that you start having nightmares again. You’re always running from something, running _to_ someone, and you never expect it when you round a corner and are faced with Akira’s dead body. You never know why he’s dead, just that he is and that you have something to do with it.

They’re just dreams, but you don’t want to face them. You sit up in bed for hours reading, and only close your eyes when you can no longer keep them open.

The next morning you wake to no new texts. Akira’s silence is unnerving after the way he blew up your phone when you were ignoring him. If you were braver, or better, you’d be as determined. But you know he hates you, or he should, and you hate yourself most of all. 

It’s not until nearly December that the recklessness borne of self-loathing wins out over cowardice, and gives you the courage to text Akira.

 **From Akechi** — 3:45PM  
_I know this is somewhat sudden, but if you’re free tonight can we go to a jazz club?_

The reply returns fifteen harrowing minutes later. 

**From Akira** — 4:01PM  
_the jazz club, huh?_ _  
__sure, why not._

 **From Akechi** — 4:03PM  
_You don’t sound thrilled_ _  
__We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to._

 **From Akira** — 4:07PM  
_nah. ur just driving me nuts_ _  
__makes it hard to think_ _  
__ill be there @ 6, we can go together._

You spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over every comma and full stop in that brief exchange, until you catch yourself doing it and force yourself to make dinner arrangements for Yusuke (he could probably manage by himself; you just need the distraction) before getting dressed and going down. 

It’s a proper wintertime. You feel strangely unnerved even though you’re standing in the shadows just outside your apartment building. Maybe you’re just excited to see Akira—it _has_ been a while. 

It’s already dark by the time you see himwalk up. He’s barely dressed for the weather, just the usual hoodie and jeans. You roll your eyes and make him wait in the lobby while you nip upstairs for an extra scarf. You rifle through your cupboard, wondering what the fuck you think you’re doing, before settling on a soft blue fleece. And then you clutch it for a few seconds, suddenly dizzy.

You shake off the spell and return downstairs, planning your night ahead of the jazz club. The scarf is quickly forgotten, folded up in your pocket.

Akira’s waiting in the lobby. “No briefcase today, Detective?” he asks.

Your stomach lurches, and you fumble for a clear tone of voice. “Actually, I no longer have that job.” It’s a cowardly way of framing that sentence, but you don’t want to admit to anything that hasn’t been pried out of you. Maybe if you pretend well enough, you’ll convince yourself you’re still a detective.

Akira looks shocked for a second. “They _fired_ you? Why?”

“Not exactly fired,” you say hurriedly, poking him out of the lobby and out of earshot of anyone passing by. “I was…asked to quit.”

“Yeah, fired.”

You look at him sidelong—“Are you angry about this?”

Akira laughs sharply. “‘Course I’m fucking angry, Akechi. You’ve been working there for _years_ , and now they’re just gonna fire you—what the fuck for?”

Anger’s distracting on him. No one is ever angry _for_ you, it’s always at you or about you or in your vicinity. You stare at him for a brief moment, caught in the warmth, and then say, “Take a wild guess.”

“Your ability? _Seriously_?”

“Yes. Are you dense? Of course it’s my ability.” You’re overly sharp and already tired of it, but you can’t seem to stop.

Akira shakes his head. “Of course,” he echoes, and just like that you’re exhausted about it again.

He doesn’t ask how you’re taking it, or what you’re doing with yourself now. What you’ll do after this. You probably have answers to those questions, but you’re half-glad you don’t have to share them. Instead you lengthen your stride to the obnoxiously long one designed specifically to lose cops on crime scenes, and are vaguely pleased when he keeps up easily.

“What did you like about being a detective?” Akira asks you a few minutes later. God, he’s so bad at keeping quiet.

You’ve got half a dozen answers to that question, but you make yourself think about it anyway. You like the mazes your thoughts form around you, and you like figuring your way out of them. You’ve got your blind spots as anyone does, but college has made you good at analysis. Mostly you like…“Everything is relative to everything else, moreso on a crime scene. I see connections everywhere, but at least having a reason makes it feel less crazy.”

“Do you often feel crazy?” Akira asks.

 _That_ makes you laugh. “I’m being _buried alive_ when everyone else is fine. That’d be enough to make _anyone_ feel crazy—but I think I’d feel this way regardless. Maybe for different reasons.”

You rarely consider what you’d be like if you weren’t being ground to dust every second of the day, but you rather suspect you’d be angrier. Exhaustion makes sustained rage difficult, and you’ve replaced it with bitter resignation. But without the tiredness? You could’ve been something _real,_ someone with the strength to make a difference. As it is you take every blow lying down because it’s easier than convincing yourself it’s worth the fight.

You are, in all senses, pathetic. You’re glad Akira gets angry. One of you has to be.

“What about you?” you ask, to distract yourself from that little existential knot. “Do you feel crazy?”

Akira hums consideringly. “My thoughts come in shapes, so that’s pretty crazy.”

That’s _such_ a non-answer that you stare at him, and then try to conceive of thoughts that come in shapes in practice. “I see,” you say, clearly unconvinced.

He grins like he’s a little embarrassed. “I don’t know how to explain it better than that, sorry.”

“Let me know if you find a way,” you say sincerely. He’s interesting in a way few people are to you—it’s part of why you’ve never regretted being alone for most of your life. People rarely stand out to you, and you don’t care enough to notice them. You’ve got your own shit to worry about. Like Yusuke, though, he makes you wonder about the depths a person can hold and hide. 

The jazz club is one of your favorite places in the city for the dim light and the tables in the back where you can nurse a drink for a couple hours and feel like a person among people for once. He grabs a drink for both of you and settles down next to you, saying, “I can see why you like this place.”

“Can you, now?” you say, amused, glancing at him. He’s perfectly clear to you, of course, dark hair falling into his face and steel eyes softened by glasses.

Akira props his face on his hand and smiles at you. “You’re practically a vampire.”

You snort. “Light is heavy,” you say, and it feels like a confession despite the fact that he already knows. You’re just unused to admitting it so explicitly. “It’s…unpleasant to be in bright places.”

The music starts up, a singer you haven’t heard before. Low notes fill the air, reflecting off the surface of your drink. You look away from it quickly, the obscure ache that defines you wrapping around your bones again. Your head hurts—not so much that you need to cut this off, but enough that focusing on the music and him at the same time is a pain. 

“Why the gloves?” Akira asks next.

You resist the urge to roll your eyes. He’s so curious about _you_ , and he talks to you like he believes your answers are worth hearing. Between that and his good looks and his—well, everything—it’s no wonder he has so many friends. “I’ve always worn them. Makes the light easier to hide.”

“Does it need to be hidden?” he asks.

You give in to the urge to roll your eyes; it’s that or admit how unnerved you are by the suggestion. “I brought you here for the _music_.”

He shuts up, restricting himself to drumming his fingers on the table in time with the music.

“That was nice,” he tells you as you’re both stepping out, an hour and change later. Your headache hasn’t faded in the least, but it hasn’t gotten worse either. “I didn’t peg you as the kind of guy who’d be into jazz.” He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans, shivering in the night air.

You make a derisive sound, suddenly remembering the scarf you forgot to hand him. “I only listen to instrumental music when I’m working,” you say, stopping him and looping the scarf around his neck without touching him. Your mother was excellent at this dance, but he’s ever so slightly taller than you and that makes it harder.

Akira’s eyes are very wide. “I wasn’t thinking about instrumental,” he replies, licking his lips. “Figured you’d be into like, death metal.”

“I’m not sixteen anymore,” you inform him.

“Any _more_ ,” he crows.

“People grow older, Kurusu,” you say, stepping back. “Invest in warmer clothes.”

He sighs, sagging a little. “You’re such a jerk when you’re not on TV.”

“How would you work six jobs if you caught a cold?” you drawl, starting off down the road again. _You’re_ not cold, though normally you’re the first to need a jacket when the weather starts getting chill. You’re dressed for it, though, and being with him is making you warm.

This time he takes a little longer to catch up, fiddling with the ends of the scarf. “This is really soft,” he mumbles. “Are all your clothes this soft?”

You glance at him. What the fuck kind of question is that? “They’re all quite expensive, so yes.”

He manages silence for fifteen entire seconds before saying, “Is light heavy _all_ the time?”

“Yes,” you bite out. “It’s always heavy. Some kinds of light more so than others, and it depends a great deal on how bright it is and how many people are around.” You exhale, forcing yourself to calm down. “It’s a little more bearable right now, because it’s nighttime and you’re around.”

You swallow after you say it—you can’t actually figure out how bad it is right now. He fucks up all your careful metrics. It’s just…bad, distractingly so, but he holds your attention despite it. 

“What do I have to do with it?” Akira asks, with a strange desperate undertone to his words.

You shrug, carefully apathetic. “I wish I knew. It doesn’t hurt so much when you’re there, that’s all.” You highly doubt the effect replicates to him in any meaningful fashion, and you’ve no desire to make him feel obligated to hang out with you constantly simply to soothe a pain as familiar as breathing.

Akira slumps a little further. “You’re shit on my self-esteem,” he groans.

“Sorry,” you attempt. You have no idea what you said wrong.

“‘M not complaining,” he mumbles. “Thanks for the scarf, by the way. One more question.”

“You’re welcome,” you say. “What?”

“Where are we going?”

You sigh. “A diner nearby. I haven’t eaten dinner, and neither have you.” It’s one of the places you found while trawling through ability user forums in Tokyo. 

“Are you paying?” he asks, suddenly lively.

You glare at him. “Unless you’ve forgotten your wallet, we’re splitting the bill.” You wouldn’t mind paying, but you’re wary of letting him feel indebted to you in any way.

He dips his head. “Yeah, okay.”

The diner is violently lit, such that even Akira’s company can’t save you from cringing as you step in. He draws closer to you like that’ll help, and you continue firmly inside and find a table for both of you, ordering a plate of takoyaki for yourself before handing the menu to Akira. He hardly glances at it before ordering curry.

“I guess I owe you an explanation for why I ran away,” he says, still playing with the scarf. He has nice hands, you notice suddenly. You don’t think it’s the first time you’re thinking this, but it hits you all over again.

You shake it off. “You don’t owe me anything,” you say. “But you can tell me if you want to.”

Akira laughs. “I’m really bad at sticking to one thing.”

“ _Really_?” you say dryly. “I would never have guessed—” he kicks you under the table, and you stop. “Go on.”

“One thing,” he repeats, leaning forward and pinning you with an oddly intense stare. “Or one person.”

“So you’ll get bored of me and walk away,” you interpret.

Akira shakes his head. “I’m afraid I _won’t_ get bored.”

You don’t know what to say to that, so you don’t say anything. There’s an odd throbbing in your hands too, a pain like a heartbeat, and everything feels like it’s slipping through your fingers—which is perhaps evidence that your ability to interface with the world is irreparably broken. 

The food arrives, but you barely pick at it. The pain in your hands is making the idea of holding anything intolerable, and in any case you’re not hungry anymore—you never were. You just wanted to spend a little more time with him. Akira scarfs half his food down before setting it aside decisively. “Whatever you do to me,” he says, low-voiced but certain like your conversation never came to a halt. “To me, and to my ability. It’s terrifying.”

“Why?” you ask helplessly. What you mean is _why don’t you just leave?_ You know it's what you'd do, if you didn’t have too little already. Lately everything you relied on has been torn from you, and you really _should_ let go of Akira before he can tear himself away too. But when he’s in front of you it’s so hard to remember how little you truly have of him—though you’re always keenly aware of how little will be left of _you_ when he's gone. 

You _should_ care, because no one else has ever cared for you and it would be awfully presumptuous to ask Akira to start now. You’re trying to care, and you’re failing in the face of the crooked smile he’s giving you right now. “It’s getting harder to pretend there’s nothing here.”

“You were never the one pretending,” you say scrupulously, missing the point because you need time to think. “That was always me.”

“I ran away too,” Akira points out. “It’s not your fault every time.” He sounds like he’ll say something after that, but he doesn’t, and in the silence light hums and your heart hurts like there’s something burning inside it.

You never know what to do with him, and some part of you hates him for unmaking you with such brutal disregard for your careful mazes and walls. Another part yearns to let him find his way to you, even as you know he’ll leave again. Not just because he’s the leaving kind, but because you’re the kind of person that _gets_ left behind, over and over again. You’ve gotten accustomed to it.

Akira has his own fears, but he’s trying to be level with you—you can return that, at the least. 

“After my mother died,” you start softly. “I called my father, and he didn’t want me. I got passed around a lot of foster homes, twice or thrice a year. Sometimes up to five times.” The worst places were the ones you stayed in the longest. “People don’t often want me, and when they do they regret it. I don’t want you to regret it, and I—” You can’t seem to meet his eyes. You’re so afraid of what you’ll see there. “—I don’t know if I can take that again.”

“And if I promise to be careful?” Akira asks, a touch desperate. “To stay?”

You don’t think anyone’s ever promised to be careful with you before. It breaks you to refuse, but you shake your head hard. “I don’t want that,” you say harshly. “I want you to leave if you want to. Promise me you won’t stay for my sake.”

“Akechi—”

“ _Promise me._ ”

“Fuck,” Akira inhales. “Fuck, okay. I promise.”

You finally manage to look at him again. The drenching bitter light of the diner washes his skin out. Your eyes trace the line of his jaw, hungry for something you can’t name. “Let’s get out of here,” you say impulsively.

“You haven’t eaten.”

You shrug dismissively, pulling out your wallet and tossing down enough to cover both of you. “Let’s go.”

He follows you out and then falls into step next to you. “You’re something else.”

“What do you mean?” you ask, glancing at him. His back is straight for once, and it adds a couple inches to his height. He’s taller than you thought. 

“All that fucking self-control,” he answers. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I want to break it.”

You can see in the dark, and you can’t pretend there isn’t admiration in his eyes and voice, or longing. You flush and look away. “ _Someone_ has to keep—”

“And it’s always you, isn’t it?” he says, gentle and warm. You wonder if this is how other people feel when they step out of cold water into the sun. You hate it reflexively, because it will be gone soon enough and you’ll be in the dark again.

“I’m not a martyr,” you say crisply. “I made my choices.”

He laughs mirthlessly, like some switch flipped his mood off. “So that’s what you’re going to do? Push me away again?”

“I didn’t _say_ that,” you protest, caught off-guard. “I don’t—I need time.” You fumble, awkward and clumsy like you haven’t been in years. “I don’t even know what happens after we—” you gesture into the air between you. “And I know it’s unfair to expect you to have all the answers.”

“It’s not unfair,” Akira says, exasperated and impatient. “You make it sound like we’re planning a war. It’s not that hard, y’know, to just hang out. Talk. We’ve been doing that anyway. More of the same, but we don’t fuck off on each other again. Not without warning. Figure it out as we go along.”

“Oh,” you mumble. He makes it sound so much simpler than whatever was in your head. “Oh, alright.”

“Alright?” Akira asks, sounding thrilled.

“No promises,” you say quickly. “I don’t trust people. No offense.” That’s a lie, though. You trust Yusuke to not turn on you, and you trust your father to hurt you every chance he gets.

You trust Akira too. Maybe that makes you weak and terrible and another burden, but you _do._

“No offense taken,” Akira replies. “I wouldn’t trust me either. C’mon, I’ll drop you home. I _know_ you’re not a child. Let me do it, okay? Christ.”

You close your mouth, and don’t say anything about how you _do_ trust him.

“You’re such a battle,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t say it like he minds. You realize that you’ve hardly noticed all the streetlights the two of you have been walking under.

On your worst days, you’d dither outside each patch for long seconds, trying to steel yourself to make the crossing. You never let yourself walk away from that fight, but you wonder now if it was always futile. Or maybe that’s just the way he eases every worry you have just by being near you. It still hurts—it always hurts—but he allows you to draw near him and stick to his shadow.

“I have a question,” you tell him.

He smiles at you. “Sure.”

“What does your ability feel like?”

Akira stumbles, a brief interruption to his fluid grace. “I don’t know how to describe it,” he mutters. “It’s just…I don’t know. Ever been lost?”

You blink. “In a mall when I was seven, and then never again.” You’d hidden under a clothes rack in a shop and cried for three hours, broken by the pressure of light above you and unable to pull yourself together long enough to ask for help. Your mother had had to carry you home. She hadn’t liked that very much—she never liked carrying you.

“Of course,” Akira huffs. “It’s like being lost. All the damn time. I go around in circles looking for shit and I know it won’t matter, because I’ll never be able to shake off the feeling.”

“Metaphorical circles, I hope,” you say absently, absorbing that. “What _exactly_ is your ability?”

“Gravity, but two steps to the right. At least, that’s how Futaba thinks of it. I can make things lighter or heavier, or move them around. With reasonable finesse, ‘cause I practiced. But that sense of not knowing where I am, it’s always there.” He looks at you. “Until you, anyway.”

You smile at him, tucking that last admission away to pore over later. “Would you say it’s like being _light_?” you suggest, letting the words out before you can think better of them. 

His eyes widen. “Oh, fuck. That’s exactly what it’s like—wait.” He glares at you. “No _way._ ”

“Terribly appropriate,” you agree.

Akira’s mouth twists with disgust. “ _Soulmates._ ”

You laugh. You don't share his revulsion—you've spent too long being unwanted to not crave the thought that there's someone made just for you. But he's charming when irritated. “You’re the best,” you say impulsively.

He goes faintly pink. You let it slide, because you’re almost home and it’s already taking everything in you to not reach for him, drag him upstairs and let him unmake you a little more. You’re more cautious than that, and there’s that dratted headache in any case.

“Thank you for coming, tonight,” you tell him. 

“Thanks for inviting me,” he replies. “I’ll see you soon?” There’s an oddly hesitant undertone to his voice, though you’re sure this is far more regular for him than for you.

But you nod. “I have class and papers to correct, but I’m mostly free on weekends.”

“Great,” Akira says. “I’ll see you then, alright?” He takes a couple steps backwards, hands stuffed in his pockets again. The scarf is dark blue and thick, and he looks oddly cute in it. “Good night, Akechi.”

“Good night, Akira,” you echo, and wait until he leaves. Every step he takes away from you tightens the pain in your chest, a hook sinking you with him, but this time you let yourself revel in it before he turns a corner and vanishes. Only then do you go upstairs, buzzing with the vestiges of warmth and frustrated desire.

You lean against the side of the elevator as you go up. You’re just too tired to hold yourself up, and you’re half-glad Akira isn’t here because you’d probably try to lean on _him._ Maybe you shouldn’t have pushed yourself to see this night through, but the thought of having lost any part of it makes you panic harder than whatever this is, so you give up on the thought.

You’ve managed to avoid thinking about your father so far, but there’s only so long you can keep putting it off. You have an email from him when you log into your laptop, a curt instruction that you’re to meet him for lunch tomorrow.

He must know, by now, that you’ve lost your job. He hasn’t done anything. You didn’t expect him to lift a hand without you begging, and you have just enough self-respect left to not do that, but somehow it’s still a little lurch of disappointment, familiar as glass cutting into your feet. You don’t know why you persist in hurting yourself by wanting things from him.

What is it you’ve ever asked for, anyway? Acknowledgement, some fatherly love, even if the extent of it is awkward inquiries into your private life, an indication that you’re more to him than another employee only hired because of mutually owed favours.

But after all this time you’re still just another tool for him, someone whose life he controls just to prove he can. It’s a good thing his political career fizzled out before it could start—he’d have made a wonderful populist despite being an awful public speaker.

Weary, you head out into the hall and examine the art things left out on the couch. They’re a variety of pencils and a sketchbook lying open. You pick it up, not intending to look, but it’s still open to what Yusuke was working on before he went to bed.

It’s a simple sketch of _you,_ of all people. You’re sitting on the couch, looking at a screen and holding a mug in one hand.

The thing that strikes you is that he hasn’t drawn you holding the handle of the mug—you very rarely do that. You’re used to holding the mug by its body, searching for some warmth to reach your hands. You hadn’t realized he was _looking_ at you. Perhaps Yusuke thinks nothing of noticing you, but you’d frankly never realized there was anything to look at when it came to you. Sometimes you don’t know how you’ve held the attention of the media this long.

You’re _tired,_ suddenly. You’re so tired you’re sure your hands are glowing, light seeping out from under your gloves like blood, lighting up the sketchbook you’re holding.

It hurts to keep the gloves on. One second there’s a distant ache like old bruises and the next second it’s _all_ pain, so much you nearly drop the sketchbook before hurriedly pulling off your gloves. It feels like there are thorns tearing through your palms and fingers, and any pressure on them only makes it worse. You sway, confused and exhausted, and sit down on the couch. Curl up on the couch and then slam upright in the next second, a scream locked in your throat, the pain surging as you bent as though they refused to be kept in the dark a second longer.

You’re fucking confused, caught between trying to drag the light back inside you and keeping your scream lodged in your throat so you don’t wake Yusuke up that you don’t even notice when he’s right in front of you.

And then you’re even _more_ confused, because it should be dark in the living room. You don’t remember turning on the lights, and you don’t remember them lighting anything up like _this._

“Akechi?” Yusuke says. His voice comes to you from many miles of water, distorted. “Akechi?”

If you open your mouth you’ll make some horrible sound, so you just stare at him, miserable and mute.

He reaches for you and you recoil sharply, shaking your head. You don’t know what’s wrong with you or your ability in this moment, but you can’t risk it hurting him. You _can’t._ You stagger to your feet and run back to your room, locking the door behind you.

You slump against it almost at once, exhausted by that brief exertion. Your throat’s so dry it feels like sandpaper, and you don’t dare go back out, so you drag yourself to the small bathroom attached to your room and grapple for the tap, catching sight of yourself in the mirror.

 _Fuck._ Is this what Yusuke saw?

Not only are you glowing, you’ve graduated right past _glowing_ and moved onto _blazing._ The light doesn’t obscure your features so much as _become_ them via some strange alchemy of luminescence and flesh. You can see yourself, but you’re so bright it’s making you _sick._

Your hands feel like they’re on fire. You open the tap and let out an inhuman goddamn screech at the shock of cold water against them, smoke sizzling into the air.

God, you’re so glad you didn’t let Yusuke touch you—you’d hate yourself forever if you hurt _his_ hands.

Speaking of hurt, _everything_ does. The pain comes in waves, and the downswings are not long. You suspect they’ll get shorter, as much as you can predict the course of something that you’re pretty sure is _killing you._ How fucking sad, that you’re going to die locked in your bathroom. You always figured that if you died it’d be a crime of passionate revenge. Instead you’re leaning over your sink, puking up light, thirsty like a rabid dog and as unable to stand water.

Actually, you should be dead _already_. You should’ve been dead _long_ before you got to the point where your skin could heat water quite so rapidly. You’ve no idea how you lasted this far.

You sink to the tiled floor, curling up between the shelf of the sink and the toilet seat. The fever you’re running makes the closed space stiflingly hot very quickly, though, and you let go of the last shreds of your dignity and lie down on the floor.

Taking your socks off is such a struggle that you nearly cry over it, because hooking your fingers in the elastic makes your entire body tight with the sensation of needles jabbing into your nerves. You press your face against the warmed tiles when you’re done and struggle not to feel like you’re failing someone by giving in right now. You don’t know how to fight this. You don’t think _anyone_ does.

Is this how your mother felt in those last moments before she died? Like a tragedy in repression and floodlights? You’d puke worse if you’d eaten anything, but at least the pain’s restricted to your body. That, or no amount of suffering will make your _mind_ take it easy on you.

You think you start whimpering as you undo your cuffs and engage in a battle against your jacket. You have to lie there, gasping, for several minutes afterwards. You want to try putting your hands in water again, but you’re too tired to stand up. Instead you let pathetic little tears leak out of your eyes and don’t think about what a sorry sight you probably make.

Eventually you recover long enough to undo your belt and the top few buttons of your shirt, and then you give up entirely and spend the rest of your little energy on throwing your discarded clothes in the tub—knocking over the bottles in the shelf over it along the way—and then nearly crying again when you realize you could’ve used that tub to soak in.

With the kind of insane temperature you’re running, though, running water might work better. You’re just tall enough that you can reach the tap even kneeling, and this time you only flinch and scream a little when the water heats up at contact again. It hurts worse, but it eases the burn. It just also _hurts worse._ You wish it would stop hurting for just one fucking _second_ so you could try and figure out what’s happening.

How are you not _dead_ yet? Your brain should be cooking in fucking cranial fluid right now, or whatever it is brains float in. You’re definitely in enough pain to _wish_ you were dead.

You have to shift positions every couple minutes to prevent yourself from heating the tile so bad it burns you. Your head is heavy and buzzing with staticky exhaustion, such that you’re leaning against the tub and very seriously contemplating bashing your brains out against the sink when someone knocks on the door.

You ignore it, sure you’re hallucinating the idea of help now. The knock comes again, more insistent, now accompanied by a voice. “Akechi?”

 _Yusuke?_ How did he even get in? Didn’t you lock the door?

“Open the fucking door, or I’m breaking in,” another voice says.

You saw Akira leave, so it can’t be him. Now you’re even more sure you’re hallucinating, and you’re in too much agony to cross the three entire feet to the door. You tilt your head back and think about how taps are actually perfect murder weapons. Amazing that you went six years without solving a case about a tap murderer.

Though tap murders are probably pretty straightforward. All those brains in the tub and sink and…wherever else you usually find brains. You’re forgetting a crucial place. Beds?

A self-administered tap murder would be lovely right now. If only it wasn’t so much effort to actually reach for one.

The door opens. You scream half-heartedly. The pain has lodged itself into every part of you and won’t let go and crying about it seems rather redundant now.

“Holy fucking shit,” Akira says. And then he catches sight of you and swears some more.

“Go away,” you mumble.

Akira comes closer. “What happened—”

“Go _away,_ ” you repeat, sharper this time. “Don’t fucking touch me. There’s sunglasses in my cupboard.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Akira asks.

You scream directionlessly. He skitters back, and returns an age later. Yusuke’s in tow this time, and they’re both wearing sunglasses.

“Fucking hell,” Akira murmurs, kneeling down next to you. You glare at him, wishing you didn’t feel like you were on fire so you could slap him or something. “Oh, Akechi.”

“What,” you hiss.

He gives you a horrible sad grin. You wish he’d stop—it just makes everything hurt more. “You’re _glowing._ ”

“I know,” you snarl. “Get away from me.”

“No,” Akira says, and raises a hand to press the tips of his fingers against your cheek—too fast for you to protest or get away. His fingers are icy, and the pain recedes slightly under his touch. “Look here.”

You look at him reluctantly. The sunglasses hide his grey eyes and most of his face. He’s still smiling. “Stop touching me,” you whisper. His touch is no longer as cool as it had been only seconds ago.

His fingertips are red and blistering when he pulls them away, and your heart screams for an entirely different reason. He rises, running the tap and presumably cleaning off the burns your skin left.

Your skin, for its part, feels like light. Stretched too thin and not thin enough. It didn’t hurt for a few seconds where Akira touched you, but it isn’t worth the cost to him and it’s faded already.

The tap stops. You look up to see Yusuke standing there. The bathroom definitely isn’t large enough for three adult men, and you’re hideously embarrassed to be seen like this. It’s worse with Yusuke than it is with Akira, though you wish it wasn’t either of them.

You don’t know who you’d rather have here. A fucking ocean, maybe, so you could drown to the depths and let yourself be crushed in water and darkness and then get eaten by fishes.

The thought makes you shiver. Shivering shakes loose all the pain gathering in your body and makes you groan into your knees, which in turn feel like they’re breaking under the strain of your pain. This is like _nothing_ you’ve ever known. You didn’t think anything could hurt this _much._

And now you’re half-glad they’re here. You think it would break you to go through this alone, not that the pain will ever feel unlike isolation.

You shift away when Akira comes closer, leaning your cheek against the rim of the tub and feeling boiling tears sliding off your skin and down the sides. They can see you cry and you don’t know how to care. You haven’t cried in years, and certainly not in front of someone.

“I’m going to put you in the bathtub,” Akira says, taking your clothes out of it and turning the taps on. “We’ve gotta get your fever down.”

It takes a long time for the words to penetrate. “If you’re going to touch me again,” you force out, dry-mouthed still and much worse now. “I suggest—fuck this. My gloves are on the couch. Living room. Get them if you’re gonna touch me or _don’t fucking touch me._ ”

“I know where they are,” Yusuke says, and trots off. Akira leans against the wall, staring down at you. You don’t look back up.

“That self-control of yours is going to fucking kill you,” Akira says, like he’s trying for conversational. He lands somewhere in murderous.

“Less humiliating than this,” you mutter. You don’t care about his opinion. You don’t care about a single fucking thing right now.

Akira lets out a harsh, incredulous sound. “Do you think the people around you enjoy the show? Thanks, Yusuke.”

Until about six months ago, there hadn’t been people around you at all. You just stare at his feet while he pulls on the gloves and then kneels down to haul you up and dump you in the tub and—

You let out a startled shriek and then can’t seem to _stop,_ the sound tearing out of you like tape left to unwind. Akira’s already trying to drag you back out but you can’t seem to get any part of yourself under control, accidentally clocking him in the shoulder before slumping against him with all the guilt of a shipwreck.

It is, incidentally, how you feel. You’re crying so badly you’re shaking, and it’s gone past humiliating into the other end, somewhere between cathartic and suicide-inducing.

“Make it stop,” you think you say at one point, through a throat that feels like a cracked desert. Akira’s hands are gloved when he guides you back to the floor. “Make it stop, _please._ I can’t, I can’t, I _can’t—_ ”

“Shh, I know,” Akira says heavily. “God, you’re burning up. Even your tears—”

You never hear what it is about even your tears, because at that moment everything finally gets too much for you and you pass out.

Drifting in and out of consciousness is infinitely preferable to the sickening pace of pain from earlier. Sometimes when you open your eyes Akira’s sitting next to you—at other times he blurs into Yusuke, both of them looking down at you with the same expression of pity. You want to snarl at them for it but you’re never awake long enough to manage it, dragged under by that hungry light inside you the way you dragged the light in so many times.

When you’re definitely awake again, someone’s drawn back the curtains in your room and you’re alone. You close your eyes again. The pain has receded to manageable levels, which makes it feels like ants marching around under your skin in neat waves of pain instead of a fucking wildfire.

You open your eyes again and stare at the window.

This is not an experience you’ve ever had cause to describe before; words slip and fail. This is what you know: the light should feel heavy. It should feel like a burden.

It doesn’t.

Of course, the strange combination of grief and relief coursing through you is poisoned by the unabated pain. But you drag yourself out of bed, narrowly miss tripping over your feet, and shuffle over to the window to look outside.

It’s a frightfully early morning—the air is cold. You’ve never willingly been up this early, and possibly not since school. The sky is a crisp, light grey, and the longer you stare at it the more it feels like it’s welcoming you somewhere you’ve never been before. It’s so _beautiful._ You’ve never once in twenty-three thought light was something beautiful. Now you can’t believe you ever missed it. 

You stare up until your neck protests and then look down, eyes tracing hungrily a view you’ve always been too jaded to notice. The streetlights are still on below, bright gold pinpricks, and the shallow morning light seeps through the city with a terrible and unfamiliar gentleness.

“Oh good,” someone says behind you. “You’re awake.”

You turn around, ashamed to have been caught in a moment of weakness. “I—yes. It would appear so.”

The lady snorts. She’s wearing a black tank top and pyjamas, a white doctor’s coat flung over to complete the look. “We weren’t sure you would wake up,” she says casually. “But it looks like your ability shielded you from the worst of it.”

You have _so many_ questions. You settle on, “Can I have some water?”

The doctor laughs. “Be my guest,” she says sarcastically, and you drag your tired feet past her to head into the kitchen.

Or at least, that’s the idea. An “Oh, god,” somewhere near your knee puts paid to that.

Akira’s sitting against the wall when you look down. He looks absolutely terrible, and unfairly cute despite it. His eyes are bloodshot and his hair is sticking up in fifteen directions, and he’s looking up at you like you’re the second coming, which is plain unbearable. “Water,” you manage, and hurry away.

You’d hope Yusuke at least would have the good sense to be asleep. He does, but not enough good sense to take himself to bed. You grimace and pour yourself a glass of water and then another, fighting discomfort to swallow it down.

Then you poke him awake. “Yes, I’m okay,” you say crisply, when he stares blearily at you. “Go to bed.”

“Nnnf,” Yusuke says.

You prod him determinedly into the bedroom, and you’re tired again by the time the door closes behind him. You take a deep breath and retrieve Akira, shoving him into your bedroom and closing the door on him with a sharp order to _get some rest._

Your errant boys out of the way, you turn to the doctor, who’s staring at you with a very amused and rather sleep-deprived expression. “Did Akira call you?” you ask.

“Yes,” she says. “I’m Tae Takemi. Are you still in pain?”

“Yes,” you answer. “But it’s manageable. Coffee?”

Your standards for manageable are skewed. You’ve been in varying amounts of pain for a very long time, even if this iteration is unfamiliar to you.

“Please,” Takemi says.

While you make coffee, she hops up on the counter and tells you what’s wrong with you. If nothing else, you appreciate the forthrightness.

“You were glowing basically all night,” she starts. “You lit up the _entire flat._ I’ve never seen anything like it, but then again I don’t have a lot of experience with light manipulation abilities. I’ve only treated Akira and about half a dozen other ability users, and their powers are nothing like yours.”

“Am I dying?” you ask, pouring the coffee into mugs.

Takemi laughs. “No. Like I said, your ability shielded you from the worst of it.”

“The worst of the…fever?” you ask carefully, well aware that that was no ordinary fever. You hand her one of the mugs, and she smiles at you in thanks. “In the end, my mother’s ability didn’t help her.”

“I’m guessing she was older than you, though,” Takemi says, taking a thoughtful slurp of her coffee.

“...By about seven years, now,” you admit. It hurts to think of outliving her.

“The worst of the backlash,” Takemi says. “How long has it been since you stopped using your ability?”

You stare at her. Your coffee lies on the counter, forgotten. “I’ve never used it.”

Takemi straightens sharply. “ _Never?_ ” she echoes, incredulous.

Now you’re starting to get uncomfortable. “My mother told me to keep it hidden,” you say stiffly. “And then she died, and people dislike difficult children enough without adding an ability to the list. Of course, no one adopted me anyway, but I dare say keeping it hidden saved me a world of violence from other desperate children.”

“Very sensible and tragic,” Takemi snaps back. “But abilities are meant to be _used._ They’re not meant to be kept locked away. When you do that, bad things happen. Bad things like _that._ ”

You flush with shame. You don’t want to go into all of the other perfectly good reasons you had for keeping your ability suppressed, like the pressure of the light or the way you never knew what to do with it. You can’t remember why it matters, though you know it does. It mattered for so long. There’s an odd grief rushing through you, because this is cutting off all the things you’ve used to tie yourself down for your entire life like those same things aren’t holding you together. “Is this going to keep happening?” you ask plaintively. You didn’t even have time to—to think properly about all your chains. They’re just gone now, and you feel so _lost._

Takemi sighs. “It won’t if you use your ability. Not too much, mind you, but a sensible amount. Enough that it doesn’t build up and erupt like a volcano.”

 _Like a volcano._ You feel cold. “What do you mean, it protected me?”

Takemi drains the last of her coffee and sets it down, gripping the edges of the counter and leaning forward. “Think of it like a child throwing a tantrum. It doesn’t want to kill you—it just wants you to pay attention and give it what it wants. Which, in this case, I imagine, is to be used. Do you have more coffee?”

You surrender your mug to her and put some more on before wandering to the couch and lying down on it. You’re exhausted, all the revelations you’ve been handed making you far more uncomfortable than the pinprick pain that still hasn’t faded and is getting more annoying by the second.

Finally you get up and stalk to the kitchen, where Takemi is still drinking coffee. “Will painkillers help?” you ask her.

She thinks about this. “I’ll write you a prescription. Get one of those two to run down for it. You’re still glowing a little.”

You lift your hand and stare at the back of it, only now noticing the slight pink aura. “Shit.”

Takemi takes her leave soon after, leaving the piece of paper on the table and telling you to tell Akira that they’re still on for next week. You wonder why he has regular appointments with a definitely-rather-shady doctor, and come up with explanations like _they’re fucking_ (she’s definitely his type) and _pre-existing health condition_ (unlikely but worth looking into).

Neither of them are waking up anytime soon, though, so you pop a sleeping pill and force yourself to doze off on the couch.

You have uneasy dreams of being handed a child and not knowing what to do with it, and every time you look down it’s a different baby. Sometimes you know it’s Akira.

When you wake, you’re thoroughly freaked out. Instead of thinking about it you grab your laptop and mess around on it, killing time by reading the news and catching up on the cooking show you like. You’ve just started thinking about lunch when Akira finally wakes up, shuffling out and flopping down on the couch next to you only to curl up and fall asleep again. It’s ridiculously adorable, and you vaguely consider taking a photo before recalling that you have no idea where you lost your phone in your freakout last night.

You shrug, dismiss it mentally, and pull up a local takeout place that Yusuke likes to order something for you. You’re all going to need the food—they’ve probably had a longer night than you.

Akira wakes up when the doorbell rings, looks around in painfully cute catlike confusion, and then stumbles to the door to open it without being asked. Most of the pain’s eased by now, even if the glow remains, so you go to your bedroom to locate your wallet, finding your phone in the bargain. You throw Akira your wallet so he can pay, and click on your phone to see if you’ve missed any messages.

Your blood runs cold. You’ve missed your appointment with your father.

You _never_ miss appointments with your father.

“Alright?” Akira asks, the boxes in hand. The tips of his fingers are bandaged this morning. “You look like you’ve seen something awful.”

You’re trying to run through possibilities in your head, and your brain isn’t working. “I had lunch with my father,” you mumble. “Today. _An hour ago._ ”

“Oh,” Akira says. “Shit. Are you gonna go?”

You swallow and come to a decision, regretting it already. “No.”

“Good,” Akira says emphatically. “You’re still glowing a little. Just tell him you’re sick.”

 _Sick_ —that’s a plausible lie. You can do that. You clutch your phone and follow Akira to the kitchen like you’re lost in your own flat, still trying to wrap your head around the consequences for this.

You’ve _never_ dared stand him up, and you rarely reschedule on him. That should grant you leeway this one time, but with the way your father works he’s going to hold this mistake over your head for the next decade. You’re so, so sick of the way your relationship feels like a noose around your neck, like your memories of your mother are the chains holding you down. You wish you had no parents at all, because nothing could possibly be worth all this goddamned pain.

Akira pulls out one of the chairs and glares at you until you sit down. “You didn’t eat last night either.”

This is true, but everything from the previous evening feels like it happened a month ago. You’re too tired to process anything you talked about, but now that you’ve been reminded of it you can’t stop turning it over as you try to eat. What does it mean to try for someone, anyway? Akira seems to think it means showing up at their flat and shoving them in bathtubs and sleeping in their bed. You’re not sure you want it to mean anything else.

God, you’re stupid and pathetic and you shouldn’t be trying to use your brain. You eat miserably and fail to not think about it.

Halfway through lunch you give up and draft a message to your father. You’re aware that Akira is staring curiously at you as you type it over and over again, variations on _sorry, I was sick and it won’t happen again._ You don’t know how much to emphasize that it was serious, whether it will come off as making excuses or stating the truth. It _was_ serious—wasn’t it?

The guilt is turning your stomach. “I should’ve just gone,” you sigh, putting your phone away. “I wasn’t even doing anything all morning.”

Akira stares at you harder. “You were running a fever that should’ve killed you _all night._ ”

“But I’m fine _now,_ ” you say reasonably.

“Also, you’re still glowing,” Akira points out, like he’s winning something here.

You frown, trying to extend your awareness to the light you’re emitting. You usually don’t have to think about this part of the process—pressure makes being aware mandatory. You fumble for it and fail, try again with gritted teeth until you’re holding slippery light, tucking it back in by sheer force of will.

The pressure returns, bit by bit. That’s how you know you’re succeeding. Just half a day without the weight of it on your shoulders has made you complacent, and now you can’t remember why you’re bothering.

You’ve never let that stop you before, though. You smile at Akira. “Still glowing?”

“You’re fucking _impossible_ , you know that?” he growls, pushing the chair back with a harsh scraping sound and standing up. 

His anger catches you off-guard, and you lose your grip and fumble, light spilling through the kitchen. He laughs meanly. You feel like crying. You haven’t had so little control of yourself since you were too young to know better. And you can’t go outside like this. You can’t do _anything._

“Is there coffee?” Yusuke rasps plaintively, because he has impeccable timing. 

Your near-breakdown forgotten, you look up to stare at him. He’s still in the pyjamas he was wearing this morning, eyes still heavy with sleep. “Have you been abducted by aliens?” you ask incredulously. “You _hate_ coffee.”

“It’s alright if there’s sugar in it,” Yusuke says distantly. “And milk. A lot of milk.”

You get up and mix milk and sugar into a mug and hand it to him. He brightens significantly on his first sip. “Oh, you’re awake,” he tells you, like he’s only now noticed. “Are you feeling better?”

He’s so good; you feel hopelessly fond. “I am. It wasn’t all that bad, anyway.”

“Wasn’t it,” Akira mutters, hovering darkly behind Yusuke. You glare at him.

Yusuke, the traitor, also looks somewhat skeptical. “You were screaming,” he says mildly. “I’ve never heard you scream.”

This is untrue—you have a girlish shriek you’d never cop to whenever anything small and insectoid and winged makes its way into your apartment. You’re dead sure Yusuke’s heard it more than once. “An overreaction at best,” you say hurriedly. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

Yusuke tilts his head. He’s no longer smiling. “Is that all it takes to be alright?” he asks, blithely vicious.

Or maybe it’s deliberate. Hard to tell if he’s learnt anything from you, sometimes. You freeze in place, trying to figure out how to assuage his worry. “It’s just my ability,” you try. “It acts up sometimes—it’s not a big deal—”

“Oh, for _fuck’s_ sake,” Akira snarls. “You’re so goddamn allergic to being worried about, but god forbid you actually take care of yourself—”

The accusation burns like only true things you can; you channel that anger at being seen for the kind of liar you are into pinning him with your coldest stare. “Like you wouldn’t do the exact same thing,” you say snidely.

He sputters. “That’s beside the point.”

“It really isn’t,” you say over him. “What I do with my ability is my business. I’m alive, I’m alright. There’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure you’d agree if it were about you.”

“And he’d be wrong,” Yusuke shouts, effectively shutting you both up for several seconds. There’s a tenseness in Akira’s posture that makes you think he’s fighting not to run from it, and you wish he _would._ “He’d be wrong, as you are now.”

You flush. There’s really nothing you can say to that. “I,” you start, and then run mentally through your options. “I apologize.”

“Oh, so you’ll listen to _him_ but not _me_?” Akira mumbles.

You grab your prescription from under the saltshaker where Takemi left it. “Why don’t you get me some painkillers,” you tell him coolly, waving it at him.

The paper flicks out of your fingers and floats over to him; he snatches it out of the air and stalks away without acknowledging either of you. 

You wait until you hear the door slam before admitting, “He’s right. I really don’t like being worried about.” You shrug half-heartedly, trying to cover up how strangely relieving it is to get that particular weight off your chest. “I never have.”

“I know,” Yusuke says. He hesitates. “We want you to be alright.”

In your ideal world, no one would ever _want_ anything of you. They’d leave you to be an island, and you’d drift away forgotten and irrelevant. You hate that world. But you also hate the thought of them spending time thinking about you like you’re something pitiable.

Maybe you are, but you’ll go down fighting to not be treated like it.

Before you can start thinking about how futile _that_ is after the night you’ve had, Yusuke continues, “When I first came here, I was…terribly lost. I didn’t realize how much until later. I was lonely, and scared, and I didn’t know what I’d end up being. You helped me without asking for anything in return. It’s only fair that I should get to return the favour.”

Words rise to your throat before you can stop them, things you’d never even think of saying. Like _but you already have_ , or _you’re the first person to hug me in years,_ or some other incredibly pitiful thing that certainly will _not_ help your case here.

“You don’t need to,” you say instead. “If I’d wanted a—a _return_ , I would have asked for it.”

“Would you have?” Yusuke says astutely. “You’ve never even asked me for rent.”

A moment’s silence. You want to think about your words but your mind’s full of static.

Yusuke shrugs. “If you ever want something, I will try to give it to you.” He’s so earnest that it singes you to hear him speak. You don’t know what to do with him—you never will. “But I can’t give you what I don’t know you want.”

“I don’t know either,” you mumble before you can stop yourself. Take a deep breath. “I mean—”

“I understand,” Yusuke interrupts. “It’s hard to know, isn’t it?”

He _does_ understand. _You_ shouldn’t. You should be better than this, better than being all useless light and pathetic wanting what you can’t have, what you can’t even _name._ You want to not be in pain, but you were so confused this morning when you woke up without the ache that you didn’t know what to do with yourself.

Living terrifies you. You can’t ask anyone to deal with _that._

“Yes,” you tell Yusuke. “I’ll…I’ll try.” You’ll do no such thing.

That’s unfair. To him more than you.

Your body hurts. You lean down and press your forehead against the table, trying to breathe. He’s near you suddenly, hovering with concern but not quite touching. You force yourself to look up and shake your head. “I’m going to bed,” you grit out. “Wake me up when Akira gets here with the painkillers.”

 _Walking_ is a struggle. You feel like you’re vibrating out of your skin with how badly it hurts and you don’t know why it’s suddenly flaring up again. Does this mean you’re doomed to sudden flare-ups for the rest of your life—and what does that mean for the weight that came with light before all of _this_? Was it like this for your mother, too? You feel frantic and tired and even as you fall into bed you know you’re not going to sleep, fisting your hands in the sheets and muffling your groans into the pillows so you don’t have to listen to yourself.

Eventually the pain fades to a level you can manage, and you realize you’re shivering. You hear the door open, footsteps padding in and around.

“Do you want the painkillers now?” Akira asks. Judging by the tenor of his voice, he’s somewhere near the wall. It’s hard to tell; his voice is deeper than most people you know. That makes gauging range and echo hard. You don’t know why you know this now. “I can just leave them there.”

“Yes,” you say listlessly. “That’s fine, whatever.”

Akira says nothing. You want more blankets, but you don’t have the energy to get them. And you don’t want to ask Akira. You’ve asked him for a lot already.

“Turns out you were right,” you mumble eventually. God, it _burns_ you to say this. “My self-control is killing me.”

“God,” Akira says. He’s there, suddenly, sitting on the bed next to you. “Akechi.”

“What.”

“Nothing. _God._ ”

“Stop saying that,” you snipe, annoyed.

His hand settles, strangely tentative, on the back of your head. It’s nice. You hate that it’s nice. You don’t tell him to stop, though, just turn your head a little so he has more space to spread his fingers. 

Something about his touch is carving so deep into you that you don’t have words. You make an awful, embarrassing keening noise in the back of your throat, and swallow it down when his touch vanishes.

“Are you—?”

“Shut up,” you hiss, still shaking. Still so ashamed you wish you were dead.

“Oh,” he says smugly. “ _Oh._ Okay, if it’s like that.”

There’s a flurry of movement, and suddenly he’s lying next to you. Half on top of you, actually, a line of warmth and solidity against your side. You shudder reflexively, trying to pull away, but you’re too weak and he wraps an arm easily around your back to keep you where you are.

“Stop,” you whimper. “Akira, what the fuck—”

“Enough,” he orders. A pause, then, “Tell me if anything hurts.”

He’s frighteningly close to you. Closer than you’ve ever allowed someone, and for longer. Close like he has no plans to leave. You subside reluctantly—not as reluctantly as you’d like. You consider what hurts, and what doesn’t, and find that the only thing smarting right now is your pride.

“I’m not your body pillow,” you grumble, a few seconds later. It’s entirely token. If he left right now, you’d start crying. No one’s touched you so much in _so long._ It feels good, and you’re starting to think _nothing’s_ ever felt good to you. Not like this.

Akira nuzzles you, and you make another one of those stupid whining noises. “Oh, Akechi,” he whispers. “C’mon. It’s just cuddling.”

“I don’t need it,” you lie helplessly.

“But you _want_ it,” he says, raspy and convincing. “Relax. For _once_ in your life, _relax_.”

There’s something about the way he says it, an arrogant surety you should resent but find inexplicably calming. You can’t relax, not like it’s easy, but he clearly thinks you can. So you narrow your focus to the nearest thing and try to take steady breaths instead of the ragged gasps you’ve been managing all this time.

Unfortunately, Akira’s the nearest thing. He’s so warm and so close and he’s actually a _person,_ and you keep losing your ability to inhale and exhale on a steady rhythm every time you remember just how long it’s been since you had this. You didn’t even realize you wanted it, that you _could_ want it. You didn’t realize—and it’s a good thing you didn’t, because you’d never have let yourself have something that put your ability at risk of discovery. In any case, you never missed it. It’s Iimpossible to miss what you didn’t know you were losing out on. 

But now it’s _here_ and you don’t know how you’re going to survive starving yourself again when he’s gone.

“You are _not_ relaxed,” Akira points out. “God, your brain _really_ never lets up on you, does it?”

He wraps his arms around you tighter, some feat you don’t bother disentangling because you’re too busy burying your face in his chest and holding on like everything depends on it. You don’t want to tell him you’ve never done this, though maybe it’s obvious from all the shamefully clingy behavior you _cannot_ find a way to stop. He might be rubbing your back like you’re a weepy little kid, and you might be _into_ it.

“You don’t have to stay,” you say, when you trust yourself to say things. “You had to come back for me last night, and you probably need some sleep too.”

“I slept the morning away, thanks to your nice bed,” Akira says dryly. “I want to stay.”

That’s scary. “You don’t have to,” you say again.

“Just how much of a hardship do you think you are?” Akira sighs. “Don’t answer that.”

“Okay,” you mumble, and turn your head slightly so you can listen to his heart.

“I want to stay,” Akira repeats. “I wouldn’t miss seeing you like this for anything.”

You flinch. “So you can blackmail me to the media?” you bite out.

Akira jerks at the accusation. “What? No! I _like_ you like this.”

“There’s nothing to like,” you say sharply, trying to wiggle out of his grip.

“You’re so full of shit,” Akira groans, but he doesn’t let you win. Eventually you give up, tired enough to trust him, and unwind enough to fall asleep—still curled in against him. He lets you, terrifyingly tolerant of your most pathetic self. 

You can’t stop thinking that he’ll leave, and you’ll be miserable again, but even that fear isn’t enough to keep you from a warm and deep slumber. It’s the best sleep you’ve had in years.

When you wake, you spend a blissful few minutes relishing the warmth, the pervasive sense of peace in your body that you can’t even begin to fathom but can’t believe you ever missed. You’re used to waking up suddenly and mercilessly, switching from unconscious to awake in less than ten seconds and always with some violently anxious jolt in the way. Now there are other options, and you’re still too comfortable to want to examine the flipside of having those options just yet.

Akira’s still fast asleep, but he’s dragged a blanket over both of you at some point. You extract yourself carefully from his grip and sit up, grabbing your phone off the nightstand and checking your messages out of habit. Your father wants to reschedule, which is surprising on its own. You didn’t think he’d cut you that much slack—

Which means, inevitably, that he wants something.

The offer’s for dinner tomorrow. You have no desire to face him that early, but—well. The sooner the better. You type out an agreement, reading it out loud in your head to make sure it sounds right, and hit send. 

You’ll have to figure out what you want from him in return. You consider asking for your old job back, but you wouldn’t hear the end of it about nepotism. It might be, but only in terms of redressing the balance enough for you to actually do the work you want to do. In any case—not really worth it.

He still works in the government, though. Maybe you can push him to support legislation that will make the lives of ability users easier down the line. That’d be a worthy use of your favors.

You could ask him for something more personal, but you’re not sure you care enough now. You only ever wanted him to want you when you didn’t have other options. Now you do, and you’re sick of the way he drains you dry, the way his pathetic grasping love drained your mom.

“Up already?” Akira mumbles. “Time s’it?”

“Nearly seven pm,” you say, still flicking through your phone.

“Shit,” Akira says groggily. “I missed like, two shifts, fuck.”

“You needed the sleep.”

“Next time you work too hard I’m using that on you.”

You ignore this. “Go shower,” you order, poking him in the shoulder. “You stink.”

“I don’t,” he huffs. He sniffs himself and then glares at you. “Fine, fine.”

Ten minutes later he emerges damp-haired and shirtless. You blink dazedly at him and then locate a spare t-shirt you’ve never worn (thank fuck you’re the same size) and then hover by, uncertain, while he dresses himself. Just in case he needs anything.

“How do you know Takemi-san?” you remember to ask, when he’s decent again.

Akira goes red. “Bad decisions when I was seventeen.”

You blink and swallow. “How bad?”

“Oh, you know,” Akira says vaguely. “She tested drugs on me and took my virginity. As one does.” He notices your expression and adds, hastily, “I’m joking.”

“About the drugs or your virginity?” you demand.

Akira shuffles in place, cornered. “I lost my virginity a couple years before that,” he mutters. “I should be getting home now, um. Thanks for the shirt.”

This just means you have time to process the kind of life Akira’s led, which turns into processing everything that’s happened over the past couple days. You could probably still think about it if he was around, but he’s—he’s _distracting,_ with his cuddles and his sharpness and his refusal to take your bullshit. And his insistence on making depressingly bad decisions.

Instead you descend upon your flat like a madman armed with a dusting mop, cleaning out the entire place. You used to do this more often before Yusuke started living with you, but he got confused and angry when you rearranged a room, so you mostly left it alone.

No more. You need to _think._

You change the curtains and roll back the carpet to mop the floor. Yusuke wanders out and then plasters himself to one wall, staring at you, before wandering away again.

It had never quite occurred to you how much of yourself you were losing to your extended war against your ability—a war that, in hindsight, you were always destined to lose. You’d lose, or you’d die, and for so long you were _alright_ with the possibility of dying.

You didn’t want to lose. You couldn’t bear the idea of not being in control. But you’ve never been in control of this—you’d always only been a slave to the path your parents set out for you, intentionally or unintentionally, with their insistence on hiding and suppressing and never giving in. You were so _good_ at that.

But it became all you were, everything that constitutes you no more than an effort at fighting something that couldn’t be fought. That should _never_ have been fought so hard.

You’re reeling with every new realization spinning through your head, and at some point during the night you’ve ended up in front of your bookshelf. You’re clutching one of your mother’s old books in your hand, staring down at the cover and wondering what the hell you think you’re doing.

After all she’s done for you, don’t you owe it to her to do what she wanted you to? How can you even think about betraying her like this? She knew the consequences of not hiding far better than you ever will, and she chose to hide with that in mind. She chose to hide _you,_ wanting you to be alright. How can you want to give that up now just because you’re tired of fighting?

And maybe this shouldn’t be fought, but that’s hardly an excuse. You’re one impossible battle after another, and you’ll keep at them until it kills you, terrified of what’ll happen if you put down your weapons.

You don’t realize you’re crying until Yusuke kneels next to you, wrapping an arm around your shoulder. You flinch and tense and then lean against him anyway, exhausted and gasping. He smells like acrylic paints. You sob into his chest, achingly ashamed of your dry choking. Every time you think about pulling away, though, he insistently holds you closer.

You give in, shuddering with leftover pain and panic. You can’t stop thinking about the last time he touched you, the first time anyone had in so long you’d managed to forget that touch was a thing people needed. You managed to evade the reminder that one time, but now the desire’s in you like an insistent seed. You don’t think you’ll be able to forget again. When someone’s touching you you don’t even remember why forgetting is the better option. He doesn’t ask you to explain yourself, which is a good thing—you don’t think you could convey the magnitude of what you’re considering.

If you’re weak, if you falter, would she forgive you? 

Your father won’t.

Somewhere underneath all of this, there’s a person that isn’t always at war. You hope that person still exists. You hope you didn’t bury him, unnoticed and ungrieved. You want to hope he’ll find love, but you don’t dare ask that of anyone.

 _You’re such a battle_ , Akira told you. He was right. You’ll circle your conclusions like a flock of crows and you’ll never commit to surrender. It’s too much to ask that _you_ be the person that doesn’t fight. You don’t have it in you.

You gently push Yusuke away and continue rearranging your bookshelf. He frowns loudly at you, but leaves. Your head hurts. You wish you didn’t exist, but you’re here now, and you’re going to wrangle this bookshelf into the Nippon Decimal Classification if it kills you. Yusuke’s back a few minutes later with a glass of water, and you give him a surprised look. He stares back at you.

It doesn’t kill you, but you fall asleep in the middle of two stacks of books and only wake up when Yusuke pokes you again, gently. “You should get a dog,” he observes.

“I don’t like them,” you say nonsensically, and roll over and fall asleep for another twenty minutes.

It’s mid-morning when you wake up, head still pounding. You scarf down two mugs of coffee before returning to your failed attempt at classification, rectifying last night’s errors and looking up the finer points on your phone.

The day passes by you far too fast. You force yourself to shower at four pm, because you’re not missing two appointments with your father. By six, you’re dressed and ready. You’re reaching for your briefcase on autopilot before you remember you don’t need that anymore. You put it down, tug your gloves down reflexively, and examine yourself in the mirror one last time to check that you’re not glowing.

It hurts again. Takemi or Akira would yell at you for going back to hiding so quickly. But you don’t have a choice, and you’re desperate to get this over with. So suppression it is. You pop one of the prescription painkillers and hope like hell it’s enough to get you through the next few hours. You steel yourself grimly and head out.

Shido maintains a private room at one of the more upscale hotels to entertain his regulars and make sure everyone stepping in is aware of whose territory they’re on. You refuse to give in to the power play, settling down opposite him and smiling calmly. You’re always been a little scared of him, but you’ll be damned if you let him know that.

Shido raises an eyebrow at you. “You don’t look sick,” he greets.

“It’s amazing what doctors can do these days,” you say blandly.

“It is,” Shido replies, but then he lets it go. He must _really_ want something.

Your food arrives a couple of minutes later even though you haven’t seen the menu yet while Shido is still filling you in on some business deal he conducted a week ago. You’ve no idea why it’s relevant to you, but you pay attention.

The plate in front of you has mushrooms. You sigh and call back the waitress, requesting an onion soup instead. “I’m allergic to mushrooms,” you tell Shido, when he pauses for breath.

“I knew that,” Shido says dismissively. 

You snort. “Can we cut the nonsense? What do you want from me?”

Shido leans forward. “You were fired from your job recently, weren’t you?”

Oh, like he doesn’t know. Like he didn’t give the director the green signal—you damn well know the director wouldn’t have the guts to pull a move like that on you by himself. “I was,” you say sharply. “What about it?”

“I could offer you another position,” Shido says. You can’t parse the manipulation at play here. “Working for me directly.”

“A plant at the SIU no longer good enough for you?” you mutter. Your onion soup arrives.

Shido rolls his eyes. “You never made a very good plant. Too busy solving cases.”

“You mean I did my job,” you snap. “The job I asked for.”

“The job I only gave you in order to be _useful_ to me.”

It’s your turn to roll your eyes. This is sliding downhill very fast, and you’re too angry to put the brakes on it. If it’s going to crush you, you’ll make sure it crushes him too. “And I _was_ useful,” you point out. “As much as I could be, considering how my hands were tied—”

“You were meant to use your ability to gain an edge. I thought you’d be smart enough to figure out how to do that, but clearly not,” Shido sneers, cutting into his steak.

You freeze in place. “What would I be doing for you?” you ask, forcing yourself to calm down.

Shido makes you wait until he takes a bite. “I want you to write a bill. If it passes, I’ll make you a junior legislator at my office.”

Is that even a real position? “I’d be a ghostwriter.”

“No,” Shido says smugly. “Your name would be on it.”

You’re floored. “ _My_ name? Why?”

“It’s a bill about ability users,” Shido answers. You try to swallow down your dread, but it isn’t working. You toy with your soup instead, waiting for him to continue. “A mandatory disclosure clause, with a view to making a registry of them.”

You stare at him. There’s a white ringing in your ears. “You want me to sell them out.” You feel like you’re speaking from a great distance. “For _you_?”

“I don’t see better options lining up,” Shido shrugs.

You think your hands might be shaking. A registry is—it can’t lead to anything good. It never has, in any history lesson you’ve ever taken. You can’t be party to that. “I’ll think about it,” you say, because you’re never more of a coward than when you’re cornered. What you _want_ to do is tell him to fuck off, or throw your soup at his face. “I feel—I feel rather ill again. I think I’m going to puke.”

He looks disgusted, and waves at the door. “Find the bathroom. Don’t make a mess here.”

You hurry out of the room and then the building, your ability straining to burst out of you. Home is too far away—you flag down a cab and ask to be taken to Leblanc, because it’s closer by about half an hour and you don’t even know if you’ll last that long.

Akira’s there, thankfully. The sight of him settles you down, and you let him draw you inside. He flips the sign on the door before leading you upstairs, summarily kicking his cat out of the room. He yowls, offended, when Akira slams the door in his tiny face. You’re still buzzing with awful nervous energy, and being near him makes it absolutely impossible to hold your light back. You strip off your gloves and hide your face in your hands, too sick to stand yourself and half-glad you haven’t actually eaten anything that would make you puke.

“You look like you were in a car crash,” Akira tells you.

“If I die before next year, it was Masayoshi Shido,” you reply hysterically, and then devolve into irrational giggling.

“The politician?” Akira says blankly.

“ _My father._ ”

“Oh, fucking hell,” Akira mutters. “Did he threaten to kill you?”

You swallow and pull out your phone. “Not yet, he hasn’t.”

“What,” Akira says. “What in the fucking _world_ are you planning.”

 _I don’t know,_ you think about saying, but you _do_ know. You know perfectly. You’ve been on the outskirts of all his dirty work for years, never being allowed closer because he doesn’t trust you enough. You’d always been too busy fending off light to try ingratiating yourself to him. But power doesn’t interest you so much. No amount of it could repair the damage your ability would do.

“Remember what you said about my self-control?” you tell him. You’re pretty sure you’re smiling—your cheeks hurt—and that it looks out-of-place and crazy.

Akira tilts his head. “That it was killing you?”

“Before that,” you correct. “You wanted to break it. Me.” You wonder what you’re doing, why _now_ of all times. You’ve never wanted—but that’s a lie. You want _him,_ whatever he is. 

Akira inhales sharply. “Surprised _you_ remember that.”

“I don’t forget easily,” you reply. “And no one talks to me like you do. Anyway, how about it?”

“Breaking you?” Akira says, voice low like he’s unsure. “Do you want that?”

You shrug. “Might as well start with you.”

“What does that mean—” Akira starts, and then your self-control _finally_ snaps and you yank him forward into a clumsy kiss. You’ve never done this before—or if you have it isn’t worth remembering. His mouth is hot and you’re shaking with need and desperate lust, wanting something to destroy you just enough that you can countenance being someone else.

Your justifications evaporate rapidly under his ruthlessness. He presses you against the door and kisses you like his life depends on it, until you’re clinging to him for support and drowning already. You’ve never been touched as much as you have in the past couple of days, and it’s getting to your head. You’re greedy now, wrapping your arms around him to keep him close and letting him take what he wants from you.

Akira licks into your mouth and you whimper, breaking the kiss to rest your head on his shoulder. “I never thought,” he says absently, still holding you up.

“Never thought what?”

“That you could be so greedy,” he finishes. “Not complaining, mind you.”

“You bought it, now deal,” you say, too worn out for real sharpness.

When you look up he’s grinning with frightening intent. “I think I’ll do just fine,” he purrs, and then hauls you to bed.

Akira’s gentle, but you’re unprepared and horribly new to all of this. No amount of gentleness can save you from wanting to vanish into another plane of existence when he strips off layer after layer of your armour to reveal bright and vulnerable skin, pressing kisses to the hollow of your throat and the freckles on your shoulders. Or the way he touches you, all the worse for how bloody _careful_ he’s being.

You _can’t_ be expected tofight this. You shouldn’t give in so easily, but you fail entirely to hold out when he draws the backs of his trembling fingers down your forearms, smiling at you like you’re something real and valuable. Like you’re something he wants to have and know.

“Touch me back,” Akira says encouragingly.

It’s confusing to be asked to do this. You nod and reach up for him, lose your courage and find it again with every too-loud beat of your heart. At least it’s still there when you press a hand against his chest. Your palms are sensitive, and you’re thrillingly aware of how powerful he is—of what he could do to you, if he wanted. It should be scary, but it’s exhilarating. Maybe you’re still in the blissful recklessness beyond hysteria, though. You cup his jaw, stroking the arch of his cheekbone. Your finger leaves glittering sparks in its wake, quickly fading.

You want to see more of that. You tug at his t-shirt until he presses a kiss to the tip of your nose and then sits up, tossing off his glasses and dragging his shirt off in a single fluid motion. 

_Where_ is he finding the time to work out between six jobs? You’re not sure whether to be annoyed or grateful, and you settle for drawing a finger down his chest just to see him shiver, just to see his skin light up.

Akira’s staring down at you, lips red and parted. “Holy shit,” he grits out. “How can you—”

“No idea,” you grin. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

He hisses, and you draw a loose spiral. A heart. Your name, which makes him grab your wrists and pin you to the bed. “I promised to break you,” he growls.

“So get to it,” you shrug, not even trying to shake him free.

He makes good on that promise. You’ll never be the kind to surrender fully, but he makes it so easy that you don’t even have to think about it, overwhelming you with every touch until you’re leaning against him and pleading for _more._ It should hurt to want so much after years of not letting yourself want anything. It _does_ hurt. It hurts even more to be given what you can’t bring yourself to ask for.

You think you cry when he’s inside you. You’re staring up at him and he’s half-blur, half-hallowed. You think he smiles down at you, reaching up to brush your tears away. “They glow too,” he tells you, and you don’t understand what he means until you catch sight of the opalescent wetness on the tips of his fingers.

“Oh,” you whisper, reaching for his hand. The light is far too much for your body to bear—everything between and around you glows. As does _he,_ your light filling him up the way he fills you.

You’ve never belonged somewhere more than you do right now. You’ve never been allowed to be what you are the way you can in this moment; all that light and his sweet gravity holding you closer and closer until you forget what you are and what he is, until you forget everything that isn’t pleasure wound so tight through both of you that when it bursts, it’s a storm, and you have to shut your eyes and hold his head against your shoulder so it doesn’t blind either of you.

Oh, _god._

It feels like liquid lightning, incandescent within and without—you gasp his name and he swallows it down, every thought dissolving into dizzying pale heat. It feels good and it’s _unbearable_ —you’re so glad it’s with _him_ and not with anyone else.

Not that it _could_ be anyone else—not that anyone else could let you feel like this. It’s all him, quicksilver-sharp and beautiful and magnetic.

It will _always_ be him. You know this, and you don’t regret it at all.

You hold each other in the aftermath. You’re no longer leaving sparks in the wake of your fingers when you trace his collarbone, but when you manage to drag your eyes away from him for a second you find that the room’s full of suspended light. It shimmers around you, cradling the two of you in so much beauty you almost wish you couldn’t see it. 

How are you supposed to live with this?

The light isn’t behaving the way it does when you’re alone. It’s slower, more an orbit than a freefall. That’s all him—for all that he isn’t half so explosively flashy as you, he’s just as powerful. You want to sear this sight into your mind.

“Look,” you whisper to him, dragging his head up from where he’s still pressed against you.

Akira pouts, the look on his face is worth as much as the vision of what you’ve made together. His mouth drops open as he takes it in—speechless for once—and you’re torn between staring at him and staring at the room. You compromise with the reflection in his eyes.

“Is this us?” he whispers, a long moment later. 

The orbit’s slowed down further, light at near-standstill. You wonder about the physics of that, and then decide you don’t really care. It’s all waves and particles, but more than that it’s _yours_ and his, and you’ll revel in ownership for as long as you can.

“It’s us,” you tell him, brushing a hand through his hair. It’s damp with sweat and it’d be softer if he found a shampoo that worked for him. It’s perfect between your fingers.

He accepts this, closing his eyes. You stroke his hair for a little longer, daydreaming about introducing him to a conditioner that actually works, and then drag yourself out of his bed. Your clothes are crumpled from their brief—how brief? You have no idea—stint on the floor, but you pull them on and smooth out the creases as best as you can.

“Do you have to go somewhere?” Akira asks sleepily.

You resist the urge to spend a little longer petting him. “I have to go home and work,” you say carefully. “I can’t put this off. My father expects a reply soon enough, and I can only borrow so much time.”

“So much time to do what?”

“To plan my death,” you say grimly. 

Akira gives you a look that’s half-worry and half-surprise. “He wouldn’t actually—”

“Oh, he would.”

“What the _fuck,_ ” Akira mumbles. “Don’t die.”

“I’ll plan for the contingency, and leave you my winter clothes,” you tell him, and finally finish fiddling with your cuffs so you can lean down and kiss his forehead.

Akira pulls you into a proper kiss. “I don’t want your winter clothes,” he says exasperatedly.

Your mind’s on the method of Shido’s exposure already. You pat him vaguely some more and forget what you say before you head out.

Apparently sex took all the light out of you for good, because travelling home is the easiest it’s been in your _entire life,_ including all the times you’ve walked around the city with Akira. You really should consider having more of it, you think absently, revelling in the ease of it, and use that time to think. You’ve been trying to re-organize your priorities without much success for the past few days, but a few things are increasingly certain to you.

The first is that you’re tired of hiding. It’s no longer an option. It’s not going to become more of an option because your mother and father want it to be. But there’s a difference between not hiding and choosing to be what you are without apology, and though you highly doubt you’ll ever achieve the latter, you can at least _choose_ the former. You can owe your ability that much, even if it twists your stomach to think of it as alive and separate from you.

The second is that you’re going to have to burn every bridge between you and your father, and you’re going to have to do it quickly, ruthlessly, and above all, _thoroughly._ You’ve turned a blind eye to his shady deals and allowed him to use you for information, but it’s clear there’s no life he can’t justify destroying in order to get what he wants, and it’s a damned wonder it hasn’t come to this before now. You have a chance now, though, and you _cannot_ blow it.

The third thing is that—quite unintentionally—you’ve found people who care about you, and you’ve found yourself caring about them in turn. You don’t know the consequences of that yet, and you don’t know what will happen to you when they leave.

You can’t stop thinking about how they both had to stay up worrying you’d _die,_ though. You can’t stomach the thought of that happening again, even as it warms some part of you to be worried about like that.

Maybe you just need to get better at breaking down in private. You used to be so good at it—but of course it was easier when you were alone anyway. Your methods need recalibration. You shelve that last one to unpack later, though. You’ve got work to do right now.

It’s long past two am when you turn the keys to your apartment, and though you’d like to get to it at once, stepping in brings a surge of dizziness that reminds you that you’ve hardly eaten all day, and skipped dinner. You drag yourself reluctantly to the kitchen, unearth a box of instant ramen, and fall asleep at the table while you’re waiting for the water to heat up.

Okay, so maybe you’re not working tonight.

At least you’re hungry enough to stay awake and finish the ramen. You force yourself to brush your teeth and change before you fall into bed, but it’s worth it. You fall asleep almost at once despite how nervous you are about the course of action you’re about to embark on.

Yusuke skips breakfast the next morning, which is a free pass for you to do the same. You get to work right away, trawling through years’ worth of data you’ve gathered.

You got in the habit of keeping notes and tracking encounters from crime scenes when you were still in high school, because otherwise the sheer load of keeping all that information in your head would’ve killed you. You remained in the habit because it was a good one, investing in the best security systems you could lay your hands on and slowly refining the shorthand you use to obscure what you’re talking about. It’s still parsable to a determined invader, but you’ve not had a breach worth noting yet, so you’re ready to consider this safe until next week.

Most of what you have to do is the awful work of deciding who you want to take down with your father. You have no qualms about a few CEOs and government officials, but he’s got connections ranging from bus drivers to researchers, and you’re not sure how many of them will get caught in the damage despite your best efforts.

There’s only so much control you’ll have over how this pans out, though. You convert your data to something that a reporter can win a prize off of later, and grimly continue drawing connections between all the various arms of Shido’s operations.

They’re more elaborate than you expect, but stupidly easy to untangle when you know the signs you’re looking for. It’s nearly depressing. You hope that if you’d taken him up on the chance to work with him more closely all those years ago you’d also have been smart enough to conceal some of the more visible links.

It’s making your job quite easy right now, so you don’t complain too much.

Yusuke swings by once or twice to demand that you stop working, and you entertain the notion long enough to grab a mug of coffee to keep you going. You can’t think about anything else when you’re like this. You hope like hell he forgives you, and keep working.

It’s nearly the end of the week before you’re done, and you’ve blown your father off twice. You let him think you’re doing preliminary research, and ask for an interview slot in a prime time slot on TV supposedly to announce your new career decisions.

Which gives you about a day to let this news break. You know only one person that can disseminate information so fast, and though you wish you could do this last part by yourself, you’ve few options on such short notice. You’re shaking with exhaustion and hunger and _nerves_ by the time the message goes through.

 **Crow** : how hard would it be for you to hack the website of a government official?  
**Crow** : hypothetically

 **Alibaba** : zup3r 34zy

You resist the urge to roll your eyes, and then give in because no one’s looking. That’s not even _correct_ leetspeak.

 **Alibaba** : wh0re u try1ng t0 hack?

 **Crow** : missed a 4 there. Masayoshi Shido

 **Alibaba** : poggers

 **Crow** : ...does that mean you’ll do it?

 **Alibaba** : y34h

 **Crow** : great. as soon as possible, preferably 

**Crow** : mshido.zip

 **Alibaba** : based

 **Crow** : thank you. please consider talking to a real person once in a while

 **Alibaba** : 🖕  
**Alibaba** : ur lucky i hate that guy too much to turn u down  
**Alibaba** : asshole

At least they’ve dropped the incorrect leetspeak. You close out of the chat window and open Shido’s website, obsessively looking for a sign that something’s changed.

You’re shaking even worse now, everything from before and apprehension on top of that. You don’t know what happens after this drops. You can guess, but they’re just guesses. You hate being uncertain, but it’s nearly thrilling. You daydreamed about doing this. You never thought you’d find the guts.

You hit the mark on the sixth refresh. A flashing red and black sign takes up the entire screen, and before you can figure out what it is, it fades out to a neatly organized list. You click on one of the links at random, and flinch a little when information you finished editing half an hour ago pops up on the screen.

God, you’re so tired, and there’s no way you’re going to be able to sleep. You text Alibaba a quick _thank you_ and go to the living room.

Yusuke’s asleep, which makes sense. It’s nearly four am. Turning on the news at this time won’t do much good, so you pace the hall restlessly until your feet begin to complain and then sit down to organize your bookshelf. Again. 

Raw panic hits you around six, and you double up over the book you’re holding and try to remember how to breathe. Light cracks between your fingers, singeing the cover. It’s no good. Your lungs feel leaden and full of wasps.

What if you did the wrong thing? It was just one bill—and there were better ways of dealing with it, less dramatic ways that don’t destroy so much. 

Do you even regret what you did? You can’t tell, past the panic. You don’t know who you’re scared for, whether it’s yourself or the people you’ve potentially caught in the fallout. You don’t know what you’re doing, and you were stupid to think this would work. Maybe it won’t. Maybe this will all be forgotten by next week and all you’ll have done is burn your bridges with the last family you have left—however little it’s counted for in the past, it’s been _something._

You don’t know why you’re scared, and you should never have done any of this. You just about manage to drag yourself to bed before Yusuke comes out to see what all the gasping is about.

The nightmares are awful and detailed and you jolt awake every few minutes with a hammering heart to a room full of fractured light, and wish you had the courage to ask someone to sit with you right now. You can’t ask. You don’t want to hear a no.

You’re woken up at eight am on the dot by a call from your father’s secretary, and you stare dazedly at your screen and wonder what the fuck you’re going to say.

You’re going to say you know nothing. You’re going to—

Cut the call and go back to bed. You’ve got an interview slot at eleven am, for god’s sake, and you no longer care what he does to you. You bury your head in your pillow and fantasize about your father hiring some suited man to finish you off for good.

Yusuke very rarely watches the news, so he mostly looks rather baffled when you arrive for breakfast looking like you’ve been run over by a fleet of cars. Thankfully, he rarely requires an explanation from you, and you don’t volunteer one before helping yourself to breakfast.

“I have an interview at eleven,” you tell him. You’re dressed already, knotting your tie one-handed as you sit.

“That’s nice,” Yusuke says. “Good luck. I’m going to go to the park to paint.”

You try to find a way to frame your dismay that doesn’t tip him off to something being wrong. “It looks like it’s going to rain today,” you try.

Yusuke looks outside. “No, it’s quite sunny.” He takes an uncomfortably close look at you. “Are you alright? You look like you didn’t sleep too well.”

“I have stage fright,” you say hopefully.

“No, you don’t,” Yusuke replies. “What’s wrong?”

You put your face in your hands and mumble an answer.

“Sorry?”

“Idestroyedmyfather’scareer.”

“You have a father?”

Ah, yes. This. “Not after he disowns me,” you say weakly. “Which he probably will. I exposed all his illegal operations.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing all week?” Yusuke asks, after a pause.

You nod.

He hums thoughtfully.

You barely manage to keep down what you put in your stomach, and hope like hell it’s enough. You’ve never been less prepared for an interview. You have no idea what you’re going to do.

It’s starting to get a little old. You want firm ground under your feet again.

Time blurs past, and you’re in front of people before you know it. You clench your hands into fists and feel unbalanced by the lack of pressure on you—you’ve walked with that weight for so long it’s disorienting to be without it. You keep expecting it to crash down on you.

You keep expecting something bigger to go wrong.

You’re half an hour early, so you find the darkest corner you can to tuck yourself into, breathing carefully. You have whatever the opposite of stage fright is; you rarely worry about yourself when you’re in front of a crowd.

Surprisingly, Akira finds you. The tug in your stomach warns you a few seconds before you see him head towards you, weaving in and out of the crowd of technicians like he belongs here.

Which explains why he was at the studio the first time you met him. He _works_ here, damn him and his half a dozen jobs. You glare at him as he comes closer, and he grins back at you. “Everyone’s talking about you,” he says cheerfully. “Could’ve warned the team, we had to come in early.”

“I’ll think about it next time I expose a major politician for fraud and conspiracy,” you snort.

“Sure. we appreciate it,” he says, and then gives you a close look that reminds you uncomfortably of Yusuke. “Have you slept at all?”

“Yes,” you say shortly. “I had nightmares.”

There’s an unease creeping under your skin that has nothing to do with light or people and everything to do with how he’s standing a precise and harmless distance from you. It was easy to think yourself above wanting touch when you hadn’t been touched in years and never let yourself think about having it. Turns out it’s a _lot_ harder when he’s standing right there and you know he’d give you what you want if you only had the courage to close the gap. You resent him fiercely for dragging this craving out of you.

“Don’t you have something else to do around here?” you tell him shortly, and he leaves off playing with the zipper on his jacket and nods.

“I’ll see you later,” he says unnecessarily. “Good luck, Akechi.”

You let him go and wonder when you turned into such an awful conversationalist. Hopefully the affliction passes before you have to be in front of a crowd. A crowd.

Oh, _fuck_.

You haven’t looked at the news this morning; you have no idea what the story being broken sounds like, or what part you’ve been slotted into. You’ve no idea what your father expects or how best to upend those expectations.

If you had any less idea what was going on, you wouldn’t remember your own name.

You force yourself to take deep and steady breaths, and then give in to the urge to look at your phone. 

Text from your father’s secretary that you read without absorbing a single word. From Yusuke, a close-up of a flower growing through a sidewalk crack that he must have nearly laid down in the middle of the path to take. Increasingly smug gibberish from Alibaba—when did they start thinking it’s okay to blow up your phone? A couple of texts from Akira, which you don’t open.

The idea of gathering up a response to any of it makes you want to scream pre-emptively. You open the news instead, then close out of that too when you discover you’ve somehow forgotten how to read since last night. 

And then it’s your cue to come onstage.

The light prickles under your skin, bearable but uncomfortable. You try to ground yourself the way Akira grounds you but it doesn’t work.

“Thanks for joining us today,” the interviewer says, and you look at him and desperately try to remember his name. You notice he looks rather distinctly like a hamster but otherwise fail to identify him in any remotely helpful way. “I’d like to discuss this morning’s news first. First, the news that Masayoshi Shido has been engaged in corrupt under the table deals for several years now...”

You open your mouth.

It goes on forever. By the time they let you go, your hands feel like there are fire ants between your gloves and skin, and you barely manage to escape to the bathroom in time to rip them off.

Of course, Akira follows you. There’s a sense of deja vu to looking up and seeing him there, hands in his pockets. But he’s not wearing his glasses now, and his grey eyes flash in the light dripping off your hands. You swallow and stare at him, wondering cravenly if he’ll touch you even when you’re like this.

“Do you want to go home?” Akira asks. His voice is barely audible over the violent silence of light that you’re trapped inside.

You manage to nod, rinsing your hands until the light softens enough to be drawn back in. You dry your hands and put your gloves back on, letting the hook in your stomach carry you to him. He places a hand gently on your back; you jerk and straighten, unused to the touch and irrationally afraid of it. “Let’s get out of here,” he murmurs, kindly pretending he hasn’t noticed your unease, and you let him push you out.

There are backdoors in the studio, which makes sense even if you’ve never been allowed to use them. Better for their ratings to allow reporters to attack you with questions the second you step out. Akira flags down a cab and you focus on breathing.

It still hurts. You don’t know why it hurts and you resent it. At least you know he’s there next to you, a darkness you wish you could retreat to.

But there’s one last thing you have to do. You tap on the partition and redirect the driver to the Diet Building. Akira gives you a blank look. “Now?” he says. “Are you sure?”

You bare your teeth at him. “No time like the present,” you reply.

Also, you’d rather be sick about this once and have it done with. Your chest is tight like you’re going to have a panic attack, but you’re not. You can’t afford it right now.

The cab stops, and you hand Akira your wallet and let him handle the rest, grinding the heels of your hands into your eyes like that will at all help. Your throat is dry, a symptom you remember from your last light-induced fever, but there’s nothing to be done about that now.

Or maybe there is. There’s a vending machine on the ground floor. It takes two boxes of peach juice to make a dent in your thirst, and another to make you feel better.

“Strawberry or grape?” Akira asks you.

“Strawberry,” you tell him absently, finishing the last box.

He buys three of those.

“You can wait down here,” you tell him. “There’s a waiting room upstairs, too.”

“I’ll come with,” he shrugs. “Nothing to do down here, anyway.”

You snort and take the elevator. He follows you like a cheerful shadow. It’s nice to have him with you—you never thought you’d prefer company over being alone. You’re still thinking about what you’re going to do with your father; you know he’ll figure out that you’re behind this, and disown you for it. You’ve never been his son as far as the public’s concerned, but the legal aspects of inheritance are trickier.

He’ll also try to destroy you. That, you have little protection against—except your status as a celebrity. You’d need to manage your following and image carefully over the next few years to make sure you never slipped off the radar enough for your father to vanish you.

That he’d try anyway you have no doubt about. Even if he goes to prison, a lot of people rely on him for power. You’d have to deal with them.

You still don’t have a job. With a few more years at the SIU, you could’ve secured a job at the Public Security Intelligence Agency, but you hate their work and you’re not entrenched enough for them to want to trust you.

In short: you’re fucked.

You feel strangely at peace with this state of affairs. You’re going to die, but you’re going to make sure Shido comes down with you.

The elevator doors open, and a few things rapidly become clear to you.

First: there’s an arrest in progress, and Shido’s fighting it as hard as he can. The cops are scared of him. Sae Niijima manifestly isn’t, and you feel a rush of affection for her. You can almost see her daydreaming about wringing Shido’s neck, even as she coldly directs a policeman to handcuff him. Shido was never a very good fighter.

“Sae-san,” you call pleasantly. “Imagine meeting you here.”

“Akechi,” Sae replies. “Can I assume you have something to do with this?”

“How uncharitable,” you grin. “I’m just a messenger.”

“You!” Shido screams. “You were supposed to be on _my_ side.”

“Why?” you ask coolly. “You were never on my side—or any side but your own.” You look around, catching the eye of people you know are tied to his operations, raise your voice so they hear you even as you return to staring at Shido. “How many of your dear friends do you think you could sell out for a reduced sentence? Better hurry.”

“I should sell _you_ out,” Shido seethes, irate and insensible with it.

You shrug. “You can do that,” you say. “I’ve never done anything wrong. You, on the other hand…”

“I’ll kill you,” Shido snarls.

“Intent to kill?” you say, raising an eyebrow. “You’re getting sloppy.” You tilt your head at Sae. “I hope the recorder’s on.”

“Of course it is,” Sae says, smiling briefly. “But you should leave. I’ll give you an escort back home.”

Shido snarls ineffectually, and you smile at him with all your teeth. 

You wish you could hang around for the end of this, but she’s right. “I’ll testify whatever you need me,” you tell her, and wait patiently while she picks out a couple cops to accompany you back home—with a detour to the precinct, more likely than not. It’s a pity Akira didn’t decide to stay down. He’s going to be dragged into this alongside you.

Sae picks out agents, which is a surprise. “Take him right home,” she instructs, and then catches sight of Akira. “Both of them.”

Akira scowls at the agents, and you elbow him in the side as you get back into the elevator. He groans and pulls out his phone, texting furiously. You shrug and leave him to it, striking up a conversation with the agent to your right.

You lose both agents in the lobby of your building, insisting Akira intended to come up with you anyway. He looks very relieved when they’re gone, and you drag him upstairs.

The panic attack hits you somewhere between the door and your bedroom. You lean against the wall, light crumbling in your throat and burning your lungs as you gasp pathetically, _painfully_ for excruciating minutes before Akira picks up your hands and squeezes your fingers.

“Breathe,” he orders. You wish it were that easy. You try anyway, because he tells you to. It takes a few minutes for you to get back under control, his voice steadying you to a precise rhythm. You imagine that voice would be rather better used in a classroom, but you _can’t_ imagine him as a teacher, though, and the thought breaks through the last of the panic and dissolves it to giggles.

“Should I ask?” Akira asks.

You pull him closer, wheezing. His hands move to your head, stroking your hair and the back of your neck.

“Are you two alright?” Yusuke interrupts.

“Yes,” you get out.

Yusuke demands an explanation, and you provide one as best as you can with Akira supplementing the gaps in your story. He looks half-impressed, half-concerned when you’re done, and insists on giving you a hug. Your light is skittering all over the place, a mirrorball you can’t control. It dances across their faces, but they don’t look away from you.

It fills you up with some emotion you can’t name, something like the carefulness but inverted. You can’t believe you get to have this, even though it should be simple enough. Even though it shouldn’t _be_ enough, it’s more than you ever thought you’d have.

You let Akira finish up the story, pressing the heels of your gloved hands against your eyes and trying to get yourself under control. It’s utterly futile. Sparks dance between your fingers.

Eventually, finally, it’s just you and Akira facing each other over your kitchen table. He looks oddly nervous. You wonder if the connection between you makes his gravity respond in kind to the fracturing of your light, and try once again to find steady ground. For his sake, if not yours.

And then you’re reaching for him, helplessly, drawing him in by the lapels of his jacket and pressing your mouths together. He kisses back clumsily, his arms around you.

You want to keep touching him, but he draws back. “Are you sure about this?” he asks intently.

You blink at him. “Sure about what?” You’re already stripping off your gloves to touch him better—one hand on his face, trailing sunshine over his cheeks and setting sparks in his curls.

“ _This_ ,” Akira repeats, placing a hand on your chest, and you finally get it.

All the overwhelming emotion of the past few hours freezes in a flash, going cold and heavy in your stomach. “Do—aren’t you?” You hate how plaintive you sound, how desperate. You don’t want him to stay just because it’d break you if he left. You know full well he’s the kind of person who _would_ do that.

Akira jerks his head, and you drop your hand. There’s no glow around either of you anymore, your light fleeing back inside your body at the first sign of a threat. “ _I’m_ sure,” he says, then bites his lip. “You’re the one that deserves better.”

“Better than _you_?” you echo, mind blank. You can’t imagine that that’s possible.

He leans forward like he’s tired, burying his head in your shoulder. “Akechi,” he mumbles. “Fuck, I can’t do this.”

You bring your hand back up tentatively, stroking his back. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” you say dryly, although you can take a pretty good guess. He’s as compulsively self-destructive as you are, after all, worse than you and better than you and everything you didn’t know you could love.

Akira’s shaking. You hold him harder, wait for him to find his words. He pulls back before he says them, eyes bright and hard on yours. “You’re a detective,” he starts, and frowns sharply before you can interrupt. “And you’re smart, and you’re hot—” you’re pretty sure you look surprised at that, because he frowns again “—and. You could have anyone you wanted, but _I’m_ a dead end and, and a bad fucking idea. I’m sure, but are _you_?”

He sounds as desperate as you feel, near the end, panic drawing his voice tight. 

You’ve no way of parsing the mix of feelings inside you: sadness and anger and indignation. Mostly, though, you’re in love. You’re so in love it’s _exhausting._ “I’m sure,” you say, clipped though you’re trying to be gentle. You just want to get the words out. “Of _course_ I’m sure.”

“I’m no good at anything, though,” Akira whispers. He’s so fragile your hands feel too harsh as they reach up to cradle his face. Light splinters over his skin like cracks. “You know this.” He laughs, hysterical. “I’m—I fucking waited for you in the lobby that time because I couldn’t think of my life without you in it and I didn’t even _know_ you and I’m so lost all the time and you found me and I can’t live without that now and don’t you think that’s a _little_ too much?”

“I don’t,” voice shaking with sincere emotion. You didn’t find him as much as he found _you._ “You’re the first thing I let myself want in my _entire life_. And you’re so good, Akira, you’re good _enough_.”

He kisses you and you kiss back, holding him close like you’re afraid he’ll find somewhere to run if you let go. You’re not really afraid; though you’re not the most patient person in the world you’ll wait for him as he’s waited for you. 

But for now you kiss him, your bodies cloaked in blinding light.

**epilogue**

Akira’s waiting for you on the pavement, though you told him to go inside if he arrived before you. He’s fiddling with his cowlick as he checks his phone, and you’re almost in front of him before he looks up and grins.

“Am I late?” you ask, knowing full well that you’re not and there’s some convoluted reason why Akira’s here before you.

He shrugs without replying, and you follow him up the stairs. It’s been nearly a year since you were last at this gallery and not much has changed. The decor is as impersonal as ever, but you notice the artistry of the architecture itself now that you’re not so violently distracted by all the light around you.

That’s the most surprising thing about the past few months—the more you use your ability, the easier it is. The first few times, Akira had to coax it out of you like calling out a deer. You’re less afraid of letting it unfurl when it’s just the two of you alone, of using your hands to light up whatever you need to see. To light _him_ up, more often than not.

It’s still not easy, but it’s there when you reach for it, and you only have to press down lightly for it to vanish subtly out of sight.

You don’t know how you feel about the lack of pain. You’re trying to be more alright with it, but it still feels like having lost some vital part of yourself. You’ve spent too long in pain to know what to do without it, though Akira insists you’ll find something better.

It’s still the loss that scares you, the knowledge that everything you build on is salt.

Akira gave you a blank look when you told him about this. “You’ve gotta get out of your head sometimes,” he hissed against your mouth, and then very efficiently made you do just that.

He uses his ability more around you. You can’t help noticing that either, like you notice everything else about him. He uses it to close the curtains and mix your coffee and hold the TV remote out of your reach when you want to watch the news. Your fond tolerance only enables him further.

(He also used it to hold your wrists down, one time. You don’t know how to bring it up but you want that again.)

Yusuke’s show is on the first floor. He was terribly surprised at receiving the go-ahead for a show—he’s young and the waitlists are long—but you’re quietly certain he deserves it. He’s come so far in so short a time, and you don’t know anyone else that could.

It’s the first showing and the middle of the day; the gallery’s crowded, and Yusuke’s nowhere to be seen. 

You reach out and bump the backs of your fingers against Akira’s. He willingly twines his fingers with yours. You don’t look at him, but you lead him to the first wall.

At some point Yusuke switched over entirely to large canvases. You can’t fathom where he finds the energy to work them, but you can’t deny that the effect is magnificent. Large swirls of color fly across the wall, deepening to a vortex at the center. It leaves you speechless, and presumably impresses even Akira’s relentlessly unartistic mind, so you mostly wander around in silence.

Some of these paintings you haven’t seen before. Yusuke moved out a few months ago, and his flat doubles as a studio that you’ve rarely set foot in due to his insistence that it’s untidy. Of that you have no doubt, and you’d left him a standing invitation to your place (hastily rescinded when he walked in on you and Akira—well) but now you mostly see him at parks and when all of you go out together. You miss the old shape of your friendship, but you don’t miss the turmoil of those months, and so you adjust.

One of the paintings you haven’t seen before is, surprisingly, of your flat. It’s curiously stylized, the proportions awry to make the place seem more imposing than it is. You recognize the placement of furniture, though, and you recognize the person-like shape on the floor.

As interpretations go, it’s not the worst someone’s made of you. It is, even, strangely tender. You’d never thought of yourself as hounded by darkness, though darkness dominates the painting.

A door slants open in the next painting, letting in light. It illuminates little, but it does enough.

Your throat feels strangely tight. You don’t look to see how Akira’s taking it, moving onto the next few paintings. They’re portraits in various amounts of light, of Ann and Haru and even Akira.

Akira’s painting is not the most interesting thing in this collection, but you trace the things you recognize out of it. The scarf that’s yours that Akira will probably never return, that stupid cowlick he refuses to do anything about, his sleet-grey eyes. They catch the light, and you don’t know how Yusuke managed to do that with oil and brushes. You feel no desire to compare it to the real deal by your side—you’re aware they’re nowhere near alike, in the end, but—there’s something about the way Akira looks in a frame.

“I’m right here,” Akira whispers, when he judges that you’ve stared long enough.

You stamp on his foot. “I can’t do that to a painting,” you tell him loftily.

“I wish I was a painting,” Akira mumbles.

“Move along, Dorian Grey,” you advise, though you’re the one holding him up. You poke him to the next wall, and he scowls at you.

Ann’s image dominates the show, though it’d be hard to tell if one didn’t know both Yusuke and Ann personally. There’s the canvas that’s just waves curled and knit all together, her hair in blues and bright purples. Racks of shoes and crumpled clothes, and you are briefly entertained and horrified by the fact that Yusuke’s definitely seen Ann naked by now. Portraits of her in various styles, a talent for drawing from the styles of others and making them his own that he’s rightfully proud of even if the roots are unsavory.

Yusuke finds you a few minutes later. “You came,” he says, as though relieved. As though anything could keep either of you away.

“Of course,” Akira says easily. “It’s very beautiful.”

“I like _waves,_ ” you say, because you’ve been paying attention. “And _terminal step._ ” That’s the one of Tokyo’s streets in broad, hungry strokes that eat up the canvas. 

Yusuke brightens. “I must admit that _terminal step_ is one of my more experimental pieces.”

“The experiment worked out,” you say, and then keep talking until Akira stamps on your foot.

You let him lead both of you around the gallery again, so he can talk about method and process and you can absorb all of it and file it away. You doubt you’ll ever understand art the way he does, but you’ve been going to sketching classes lately out of some desire to know him better; you like how earnest he is, how unfazed by ideas of right and proper. Unfazed enough to show up at your flat and demand that you take him in, and determined enough to see his decision through. It’s worked out in your favor, and you’re still looking for ways to return that to him. 

But Akira’s going to lose his head if you make him stay a little longer, so you make your excuses and step out together.

“Wanna grab something to eat?” Akira asks. “Shit, it’s raining.”

It is raining. It’s also sunny, a rare combination. “Maybe we can go to that place near Ginza,” you answer, pausing on the top step to take your gloves off. You don’t want them getting damaged.

“There’s a lot of places I like near Ginza,” Akira says.

You glare at him, stepping out at last. He’s being dense on purpose; you’ve only been to one of those places together. He grins at you, shameless, and you wander off together. The rain is soft and cool on the backs of your fingers, and the sun is warm and light at your back.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://ciaran.tumblr.com) & [twitter](https://twitter.com/_intimatopia). comments are ♡

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [hold your hand to that goodnight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28920525) by [wondernoise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wondernoise/pseuds/wondernoise)




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